I just signed in here after not having posted since I'm not sure when. School has a way of erasing all life and time outside of class. I've kinda hit that point where even after I finally shut my computer down and close up the books for the night, I lay in bed unable to sleep because I can't stop thinking about all of my assignments and all of the anatomy terms I need to be memorizing, and that I should not be sleeping until I have my masters degree. I'm literally losing hair, weight, sleep, and quite arguably, my sanity. Although, many would probably either say that I lost my sanity long ago or more likely, that I never had it to start with.

Anyway...I studied for like 13 or 14 hours today and finally hit a wall tonight, so naturally, I decided to get on my computer. Not like I'd want to get out and do anything or see the world or at least go to Target. Besides, the roads are pretty frozen right now so I would probably just end up seeing a ditch or a guardrail after sliding off the road.

Right now my brain is running on minimal zzz's and my three neurons have been stretched pretty thin this week.

Midnight reflections in a tequila mirror.

For starters, never drink tequila if you have been suffering from particularly bad mood swings for the past month or so. That in itself is a recipe for disaster, and if not disaster, at least a series of unfortunate events that you will probably wish you could undo the next morning. Secondly, make sure that if you do proceed with the afore mentioned activities, someone else is there to take responsibility for your cell phone for at least a couple of hours. Sort of like a "save me from myself" mentality, if you will. Even if you won't give it to someone else, at least think about turning your phone off and throwing it in a pond or the ocean. Trust me. You'll be glad later on. Drunken conversations are never, never, never worth it the next day. While you're having it, it seems like the best thing in the world, like you can finally say things you have wanted to say forever. Which is exactly my point. There is a reason you never said any of those things before, and that's because your prefrontal cortex is usually acting as a buffer to the lower parts of your brain, the parts that scream "YEA LET'S GO BUNGEE JUMP WITHOUT A ROPE!" In short, the prefrontal regulates stupidity. Unfortunately, when you drink tequila at midnight, it overwhelms that small portion of your brain and the other parts surge forth unchecked and uninhibited, so suddenly, driving to Dunkin Donuts with your little brother's friend for stale pastries at 12:14 am sounds like the greatest idea ever, bar none, and even worse, you find yourself texting with someone for a retarded amount of time, someone you know you shouldn't be talking to late at night after consuming tequila. Good grief.

I just wonder to myself what it is that flips the switch in our brain so that after a certain hour of the night, we become way less inhibited, even if we haven't been shooting tequila. I finally established a rule for myself a few years back that pretty much goes like "any email I write after midnight will be saved to my draft box until I review it the next morning and can declare it legally sane". Obviously, that rule does not nor has it ever applied to this blog. On one hand, late night conversations have a way of bringing out an openess and honesty in people's thoughts and emotions that never sees the light of day, and for good reason. 99% of those interactions are regretted the next day, normally with the party in question going "why...oh why did I ever say that? I feel so stupid!"

On the other hand...it can be way easier to talk so someone at midnight because the overall silence and darkness act like a security blanket,making it easier to finally open up. Unforftunately, I still have to side with the fact that opening up at midnight about something you can't talk about in daylight normally has nothing but regretful thought attached to it the next day.

End of another week..and hopefully, the end of my mid-semester slump. Somewhere in the middle of each term, I get a 2-3 week long streak of not caring about class and decide that my time would be better spent sleeping, day-tripping, shopping, nose picking...pretty much anything other than schoolwork (take the number of blogs I wrote last week as evidence). Thankfully, this time around I did manage to stay on top of my classes and kept my grades in the 'A' range.
I think right now I have something like 7 weeks left. Maybe eight. Maybe I could consult a calender instead of guessing, especially since I have one on my computer. Ok. 7-1/2 weeks to go.

So now that I am done hating on school and am back in the game, I'm starting to look way way ahead on the road. I have two years left here in glam town before I get my RN. After that, I was seriously considering going away to WA to finish out my bachs degree...but...suddenly I feel the pull of going to all out Med School. It would be sssooo much longer in school but it could be so worth it in the end. Part of my motivation comes from my Mom and her older sister. They are both so smart and are such strong women. I won't even begin to pretend to have the number brain cells that they do cuz I've microwaved my food for way to many years and by doing so have passed second-hand radiation to my brain, but still, I want to be like them.
Here's my conondrum: I really really want to be able to cut on people and diagnose them myself, BUT I also want to be out working on people sooner that 230 years from now, which is the usual time table for med school. That, and my counterfeiting press still has some bugs to be worked out before I can start printing my own money (hey, I learned everything I know from the government). Yikes...doctor school is like 432k to attend. That's an approximate number and does not include textbooks, uniforms, housing, tuition, or a cafeteria plan. It does however, get you a sweet hoodie with the university logo on the back and a matching pen and a license plate frame. Maybe if I buy all of those things off Ebay, I could just open a private practice and everyone would believe I really was a doctor because obviously, my car would be parked outside with a legitimate plate frame, my front desk would have a legitimate pen on it, and I would have a legitimate sweater hanging in my office.
Next concern: I want to travel before I'm 90. I want to get out into the field now and work on hurting people. No, I don't mean I want to practice hurting people...i want to practice the art of healing on hurting people. *This is why not just any random person should be allowed to write words for others to read. Others can be mislead by poorly crafted sentences and they might think that I want to run off to another country, drive on the wrong side of the road, and have head-on collisions with indigenous personnel, thereby "working on hurting people". * Back to what I was saying, if I go to med school, it is going to be a long, long time before I even have the opportunity to drive on the wrong side of the road (not that I would. I'm just saying it might be nice to at least have the opportunity to choose not to). No joke, seven more years. And a few minutes ago I thought seven more weeks sounded horrible. That doesn't even include residency or internship.
Basically, I'd be 35 when it was all said and done. Ten years is a long, long time. I know...I know...you're probably thinking that in ten years I'll be ten years older anyway so why not spend the ten years doing what I want to do instead of not doing it just because I'll be ten years older by the time it's done, right? That's a good point that you make. I don't really have an answer except that spending ten more years inflicting compressed discs on myself from packing thirty books around seems kinda horrible and bottomless right now. That's like two more anatomy classes, 5 more math, 5 or 6 more chemistry, and worst of all, a lot more humanities, with all the touchy feely crap that goes with. Don't get me wrong. Obviously, I love to write. But seriously, how many more stupid portfolios can a girl possible write? I think I've done like 50 already.

Wake up call in a bad dream?

I had a dream that my mom died. And I couldn't help her or save her. She was laying there on the sidewalk and as I ran up to her and fell on the ground next to her I tried feeling for a pulse but I already knew she was dead and there was nothing I could do. I felt so powerless and weak and useless. Is that what it will feel like when I become a nurse and one of my patients dies? I can't get the picture of her out of my head. The last time we talked, I said some things that really hurt her. In my dream, she walked out of the house and it was all windy outside and we heard a tree branch fall and I knew what had happened. I ran outside and saw her laying there motionless with a big branch on her neck and I knew she was gone. I grabbed the branch and flung it away and screamed for someone to call 911 but myself... I froze up. Couldn't do anything except touch her face, sob, and ask her "please...please don't go. Mom please come back. Please... you can't be dead. God please don't take my mom away yet". I was sitting there hunched over next to her on the ground and she didn't come back.

So why do we have dreams like this?? Are they cruel jokes played on us by our own minds? The manifestation of our worst fears?

Or do they serve as bittersweet reality checks, telling us "hey...think twice about your words when you utter them, because you never know what tomorrow may bring"?

Running on 5 cylinders..make that 3.

I made it through today and yesterday, and for that major accomplishment, someone needs to give me a klondike bar.

I overslept both mornings and consequently, did not have time to brew a pot of coffee. And that's pretty stupid because no matter what, before they leave their houses in the AM, diabetics shoot up with their insulin, cardiac patients jump start their pacemakers, hypertensionites take a chill pill to lower their blood pressure, and constipated people drink prune juice. It's just how it goes and no one would even think to skip on their treatment because they know that something unfortunate could happen, like death or a coma (well...constipated people might not die but the results would still be pretty unfortunate). But I decided that makeup was more important. Which is why I had one nicely done eye and one eye that looked like it had been stabbed with something sharp and black...like a mascara brush.

So why, oh why, if I can't operate a mascara wand, do I think for a minute that it's OK for me to operate machinery or motor vehicles while not under the influence of caffeine? Really. In spite of this deficiency yesterday morning, I made it to school with 15 minutes to spare before lecture.
Take a minute here for a simple math formula that will explain things better than I can, where, coffee= life (or L), lecture=sleep (or s), me=I (or I), and coma=vegetative state (or v).
This gives us: I-L=SV. If we divide this out, we realize that M-I-C-K-E-Y...and now you know why I need to have coffee. It's a simple matter of mathematics.

Really though, my friend Reena and I walked up to the fountain of life (for reals, wouldn't that be a sweet name for a coffee shop?!?!) er cafe and on the way, I tripped over a flat surface and ran into the wall. Twice. In an uncrowded hallway. I wasn't even wearing barbie heels. (If I was I would also have crashed through a faculty office window in the hallway and gotten tangled in the blinds). By the time we got back to our classroom, we were a few minutes late and I was still unable to walk straight and I accidentally whacked a few students with my backpack trying to make it to my seat gracefully. My backpack had a computer, a binder, and 3 textbooks in it. Since I was being graceful it probably felt like butterfly kisses on the backs of their heads.

FFWD to this morning. I made from my house to the counter at the bank and couldn't remember anything about what happened in between my front door and where I was standing (it's only a 15 mile drive, for Pete's sake). Then I handed a check for deposit to the clerk, sans endorsement or deposit slip, and stood there smiling joyfully, waiting for my receipt. I'm sure people like me make her want to carry a gun to work. If she commits a homicide at my bank tomorrow, I will voluntarily turn myself in at the police station and act out a mime performance of my behavior.
They will immediately release her, but I will probably need to enter the witness protection program.

Tomorrow I am going to brew an extra strong, extra dark, full pot of coffee. Then, I'm just going to take the lid off the pot and I'm going to sit on the kitchen floor in my pajamas, drinking it till it's gone. Then I'll brew another and drink it too. Then, and only then, will I do anything involving higher motor function, like brushing my teeth or going to the bathroom or opening the blinds.

pots and pans are scary wicked

I have a magic refrigerator. At least, that's the only explanation I've come up with for the strange phenomena that repeats itself every night in my kitchen.
I arrived home from a long school day around 6:45 this evening. Fred and Bud had both already been here for at least an hour. I was sort of expecting dinner to be on the stove, because I made enough last night for two meals, because I knew that I would be home later tonight and wouldn't want to cook. I just sort of thought that if I had everything pre-made and sitting in the fridge waiting for a simple endothermic reaction, they'd go the extra mile and dump the spaghetti into a pot and turn on a burner. You can start laughing at any point, because when I walked in, the kitchen was dark, cold, and lifeless.
Which made me wonder why this is a continual, repeat performance in our house. I can get home and throw together a decent meal in about 20 minutes. I'm not talking prepared processed box crap either. I mean fresh, healthy, tasty food. Fred, on the other hand, will get home and if there is no food prepared for him, have graham crackers, pickles, bologna, and oreo's for dinner.
And we pull our meals out of the same refrigerator. I don't get it!
It's like the concept of including a pot or pan or baking sheet just throws up a million warning flags that say "if your meal requires the addition of heat, it will take 7 hours and you will have 500 dirty dishes to deal with when it's all said and done." Talk about mental blocks.
Anyway, getting back to tonight. I started heating the spaghetti in a (gasp) pot and turned on the (no!) oven to heat the bread rolls. It really did take forever, like 15 minutes at least. I also had to pull the parmesan cheese out of the fridge as well as the butter. It took skill.
My question is this: What the heck is it about men and the kitchen? My younger brother will grill man food, but put him in on the linoleum and his culinary ability extends to taking pop tarts out of their foil bags. My dad is a civil engineer. He can design power plants and dams and mines and all kinds of crazy huge things, but when he looks into the fridge it's like his brain just doesn't interpret the stimuli in front of him. I mean it. Even prepared leftovers that just have to be reheated don't make it to his optic nerves.
I've even given him precise instructions on the phone about what he can make for dinner if he's on his own for the night. Me: "Down on the second shelf, you'll find a clear container with a blue lid. Take the lid off and heat it for one minute." Him: "Nah, I don't want to mess with all of that, I think I'll just do something easy and stop at Blake's on my way home and grab a burger. You want me to get one for you?" Me: "....."
Anyway, I was originally saying that my refrigerator is magic. That's because apparently, I'm the only one that can see things in it that can be combined to make actual meals that the rest of the world would accept. Bud can identify his leftover fast food containers from the previous night, and Fred can see pickle jars and bologna.
I might stop fighting it and just join their side instead. It'd be so much easier. I could have canned tuna on graham crackers and cold black beans out of the can and slices of processed cheese straight out of the wrappers. It's starting to sound better by the minute. Thanksgiving dinner would be pretty sweet. There's some canned turkey in the pantry, and I think we can throw that together with a bag of doritos and some cinnamon raisin bagels and call it a day.

Edward is my homie

I powered up my *new laptop* with the intention of briefly checking a few sites before starting on my nightly homework, but noticed that my dear friend Megan had tag lined me in her blog (barefootcopycat.blogspot.com), and I started to just comment back on her page, then suddenly realized I had written about 4 paragraphs and that it might be better if I didn't blog on her blog.

I sensed some doubt and cynicism from Megan concerning my pop culture awarenessometer.. She referenced Edward Cullen in her blog but didn't think I knew about him. I happen to have seen the movie and totally know who Edward is, which I vaguely if not directly referred to in my last blog, where I talked about vampires on sleds eating wayward tourists. Duh Megan. I'm like a dang authority on Edwardism.

I also saw a picture of the lost boys I mean vampire boys I mean shirtless men that were cast for roles in the upcoming movie. At first I was going to make a crack about being a cougar crushing on teenagers but further examination revealed that these fellows are more like 22 at least (which is still pretty cougarish for old bats our age, but hey, legal is legal).

Now, I have to confess that I have not yet read the Edward saga. I'm the only female between 12 and 137 that can make this claim. Everyone keeps telling me "OMG are you for real these are the best books EEVVAARR you so need to read them Edward iiisss sssssssssooooooo hhhootttt!" Um...he's in your head. Well, he was to start with. And he is sparkly. Dang it. Other men are just ruined forever. Thanks a lot Edward...now I can never even look at anyone else. Even if somehow, some way, some day, I did, I'd have to carry a can of iridescent spray paint to coat him with before I could even consider. Can't you see it? Me chasing a man around the park trying to paint his face? I'd probably accidently spray a little kid and get thrown in jail.

Back to the reading part, I'm house sitting this December on my Christmas break (yea I know...I can hardly stand the excitement either!), and plan to use part of that time slot to curl up in front of the heater vent with a stack of non-school books that do not mention anything about "gastrointestinal reflux disease" or that have the words "sella tursica" printed in them. I might even make a picture blog about it. Just for Megan.

Day Tripper

We've all heard it said that life is what we make of it. More frequently though, it seems that life becomes what we don't make of it. We can miss out on a lot of cool stuff if we aren't careful. I realized that this was happening in my life and had an epiphany about needing to ditch my school books and get some fresh air. Accordingly I got all wild and crazy yesterday and went on an unplanned day trip with my cousin Bri.

We started out saying "Hey, let's go to town and get something to eat.Then we couldn't decide where in Farmington we wanted to eat, so we started driving. This took us to Durango, where we still couldn't decide where to eat. Continued driving. Wound up in Silverton, where we walked around the two blocks of town for 3o minutes trying to decide where to eat. The town is pretty much ready to close down for winter and store owners were in the process of boarding up their shops. This gave it an overall weird creepy deserted mountain village feeling...I thought vampires were going to start sledding down the surrounding mountains to eat us all for lunch. At any rate, we were the only non-locals around and all of the locals were giving us the required snotty "you aren't from here" local gaze. They knew we didn't belong, and they'd probably sacrifice us to the bears if we dared stay after sunset. Which made me think that vampires might be a nicer alternative.

In the meantime, we still hadn't eaten. We finally found the one restaurant still open, a "Brown Bear Cafe." We walked in, uncertain of the seating etiquette, which made us stand out even more than we already did. The waitress stood there washing down the one dirty table for five minutes before she looked at us. Because, obviously, there were only 25 empty tables, which isn't nearly enough for two girls to sit at (do we really look like we might order that much food? Yikes). She finally condescended to acknowledge our existence and asked "Did you want a table?" To which I wanted to say "No, no...I want to stand out front and eat spagghetti out of my hand. That way the vampires don't have to spend so long looking for me."

We were finally seated, and 20 minutes later, another waitress asked "do you girls want something to drink?" Again....I wanted to say "No...no...I brought my own snow to melt." Gosh. It was like "torture the outsiders before we sacrifice them" day. We would have left but hunger prevailed. I was like 5 seconds from becoming anorexic. These locals were WEIRD. Two other groups came in while we were sitting there and they were obviously down-with-the-people, nature-loving locals that swim under frozen lakes in their birthday suits and catch fish with their bare hands, then eat raw while still underwater...all winter long. The whole outdoors thing isn't what makes them weird. All Coloradans are like that....they were weird because none of them talked. They sat there eating in silence, giving us weird stares all the while.

Our food finally came and I swear, the waitress stalked us like we were going to run out on our check. Why would we do that? She'd sick the vampires on our car as it wound its way back up the pass if we even tried to. If you've been to Silverton, you totally know what I mean. There would be NO escape. Anyway, we left her a generous freakin tip just to prove that we were nice people, even though we were talking trash as soon as we walked out of the joint. I don't get why waitresses do that. Why in the world would someone pick a desolate town, where they are outnumbered like 500 to one, leave their car at the other end of main street, choose a place where they are practically the only table, and then try to walk out on a check? Please.

After that, we went into a little tourist trap shop, where I bought an awesome necklace and earrings set that I've had my eye on forever. Again, although we were perfectly sociable and polite and spent money on their junk in what has to be a slow month for them business-wise, the two old clerks looked at us really strangely. Like they knew something we didn't. I'm telling you, it was downright creepy weird. Picturesque little town...whatever. More like "we trapped two of them....quick, deflate their tires!"

We hauled back to Durango. The locals might be greasy unshaved pot smoking hippies, but they are nice, and the coffee baristas don't look at you like you have '666' tattooed on your forehead. Gosh. I know what it is...Silverton doesn't have a single freaking coffee shop, at least none that I saw. Durango has like 50. Coffee makes people happy, and happy people just don't go around sicking vampires on non-locals.

Patience: The Virtue I Forgot.

I'm debating writing a book.

Aaannnndddd, that was a new record for me. I managed to keep a secret idea to myself for about 30 minutes this time. It's taken me 25 years to reach this point, so by the time I die I could conceiveably keep my mouth shut for...30 minutes. I'm allowing for my quiet quotient to double by the time I hit 50, but also figuring in that my brain will have degenerated back to current levels by age 75 (which is a normal life expectancy). This is not just me speaking. This is science, and it explains why old folks like to gossip so much.
The subject of the book? Learning how to wait patiently without honking the horn and yelling at the lady in front of me,"Grandma! The gas pedal isn't there for decorative purposes!" while in a mad rush to get to the next red light before her. Ok, so the lack of patience part isn't so much about actual road rage. Impatience on the road is simply my metaphor of choice for the way we all have a tendancy to want to get to the next life place faster, be it starting kindergarten, getting a driver's license, marriage, children, careers, education, retirement, buying our first big house, getting kids raised, etc.
In our hurry to get to the next place, we often fail to stop and appreciate what is happening where we are. When we're driving somewhere, we will get there (unless, of course, we get hit by a bus on the way) and normally, no amount of yelling and being mad will get us there any faster. In fact, the drive is normally a lot nicer when we just relax, especially for any victims I mean people in the car with us.
I'm all for planning for and being excited about the future. But when I get upset and impatient about where I am now, I think I cheat myself out of what really is a great time in my life. I mean, how much good does it really do me to have a pity party about being single, or that I still have 2 years of school left, or that...blah blah blah....you get the picture. No, life isn't what we thought it would be. I look at all of my friends and pretty much none of us are living the awesome lives we dreamed of as kids. Our rose colored glasses fell off (or in some cases, were violently knocked off) quite some time ago.
Almost everyone I know, be they 5 or 45, is waiting for the next phase. Waiting can suck if you let it get to you. On the other hand, waiting will teach us the most valuable lessons we can learn. All of these seasons that we go through have a set length for a reason, and often we can't understand what that reason is. I think it's so that our minds and hearts and emotions can reach a certain level, go through the fire if needed, and gradually be prepared for the next season.
Imagine if you got everything right in order, just like you wished and wanted? You'd probably be happy, but I can't imagine you'd be grounded very deep. All of these trials and this learning to walk by faith and trust God each day to get us to the next is what makes us able to withstand life when it doesn't go our way.
And I think I'm starting to talk in circles now that it's 3 AM. I think my awesome book idea just morphed a long way from what I originally envisioned after turning off my light to go to sleep at 1 AM. By tomorrow night, it'll be a potluck cookbook. Hey, who doesn't love a good jello salad recipe?

A day in the life.

Apologies to any offended.

I just realized that I haven't really introduced the cast of characters that play a daily role in my school life. I have my BFFs and I won't make fun of them here. I only do that to their faces. They are the two awesome girls that I study with and that I share "it's five o'clock somewhere" post-anatomy test margaritas with.
My campus is really small. At first I didn't think it was too small but I'm starting to realize that everyone knows everyone, which is overall nice but sometimes makes you claustrophobic. My point is that I see the same people over and over every single day without fail. I don't know them by name but I see them more often than I see my own family. The awesome part of not knowing their names is that I can (and do) make endless, merciless fun of them.

Lieutenant Dan: I swear this guy looks EXACTLY like Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump. He's also known as Mr. Red-shirt wearer, because he wears (ready?) a red shirt every single day. I'm not sure if it' the same one or if he has a whole closet full but I do wonder if he lies awake each night wondering what to wear the next day. Maybe he started with one red shirt and six white shirts and his mama never taught him how to do laundry, so the one red shirt just keeps multiplying indefinitely, like a starfish or earthworm. I want to go tell him "WASH IT SEPERATE! BREAK THE CYCLE! STOP THE MADNESS!" He takes his shoes off while he studies and his socks are quite white, which means my washing machine theory may have a few holes in it. Dryer theory is a whole 'nother deal. It's the explanation for how one sock disappears while the other remains. These are both very complicated string theories so I won't go any deeper tonight.

Forrest: Ok, he doesn't look like Forrest, and I don't have an obsession with that movie. The guy justs acts like it and when he talks in my nutrition class, regardless of what he is saying, all I hear is "an bolled shrimp an fried shrimp an shrimp gumbo an shrimp scampi an.." We also call him Bobble-head because his head moves around like that while he is talking. Yea. He sits right by me and I have sudden unexplainable coughing fits when he talks. And his eyes close the entire time and he keeps this stupid smile on his face all the while. Yesterday, I kid you not, he went off about how his aunt was super-obese and she decided to have the stomach-banding surgery and then she died three days later but it was a good thing she had it done because then other morbidly obese people could see that it was a viable option. I don't think I need to say anything further.

Homeschoolers: Well, I'm fairly positive that they were homeschooled. I can spot homeschoolers at 5 miles. It's a brother and sister team and they walk everywhere together in their clothes that unfortunately went out of style about 10 years ago. I think they share clothes with their parents. They pull rolling backpacks and sit together listening to rebel country music on their laptops. The music thing would be fine except that they haven't grasped the idea of EARBUDS, so when they enter the big study room and sit in the corner, we all get to hear Shania Twain feel like a woman. Even better, the girl sings along. Loudly. Yea, it is that painful.

Wedgie-man: Self-explanatory. He's an aviation student and at the start of the semester, he was really good looking, but that changed as we were walking down a desolate hallway one day. He was walking maybe 12 feet ahead of us and seriously, he had to have known there were two girls behind him, because let's face it, I'm not known for talking quietly, but he went ahead and solved his wedgie-issue anyway. And he didn't do it discreetly...more like one foot lifted off the floor. I know he knows we saw, because lets face it, it's not like I laugh at people any quieter than I talk. Oh well. It's his own fault.

Inside sun glasses wearer guy: Another student pilot. He's eleven. Ok ok fine...maybe he's 20. He hasn't hit puberty yet, just managed to get really tall without any other apparent hormonal changes. He still has the little boy "my mom cuts my hair" style going on, but this dude rocks his Top Gun sunglasses inside the building all the time. I'm going to buy a pair just like his so when he is standing there near my table, I can just nonchalantly slide mine on and be as cool as him. Maybe I could walk to the bathroom or to the vending machines while he is there...but my eyes are bad anyway so I'd probably trip over power cords and pull like 5 laptops to the floor, or I'd fall down the cafeteria stairs. Or I could stand there fumbling with the buttons on the coke machine, trying to correctly insert my money but unable to see the slot.

Mr Awesome Hair Guy: Sorry, I really promise this is the last student pilot I make fun of. They just make the easiest targets. Besides, he is so awesome that it would be unfair to him to not list him here. I'd say he's around 25-30, and he's going to marry himself. He walks around in his awesome uniform (they wear white shirts, dark blue pants, dark blue tie, and black shoes). Sort of a Mr. Rogers effect if you ask me but anyway...they also have a flight jacket. He grabs the collar of the jacket and holds it over his shoulder, and as he walks, he tosses his tanned head so as to flip his surfer hair. Each time I see him crossing the commons, I want to start yelling ''WORK IT!...WORK IT!!...."

This concludes this session of "How to be a snarky, cynical, sarcastic critic of all you survey". Tune in again next time and I'll introduce the cafeteria crowd.

Hands and Feet

Once again, this is a serious post. I almost feel like I am failing my blog when I write something serious, but for now this is what is in my head and heart.

My brain has been really sidetracked lately. I go to school each day and get another step closer to applying to the nursing program. Each test is just one more stepping stone to my goal. Each project is just another thing I have to do my best to get an A on. My friends and I have developed OCD when it comes to our grades and seriously get mad at ourselves for anything less than a 100. I mean, even if we do get a 100, we get mad if we missed an extra credit question (and the accompanying chance to get our overall average up another point or two). We want to be the best because we know there are probably two hundred other students trying just as hard to be among the 60 that get selected this coming spring. It's a scary, scary thought. Everything we have been working towards comes down to how we look in an application packet.

Last fall wasn't this scary. We weren't applying yet and still had a year to get everything together. Now it's our turn and all of our dreams come down to how we do this semester, if we do well enough for our teachers to write recommendation letters, how well we do on the entrance exam. It's enough to make you lose sleep (obviously...since I'm writing this at 1:30 AM on a school night).

Anyway, somewhere in the middle of all this school stuff this year, I started feeling sorry for myself that I'm not married yet (yea, this has been the theme of my pity parties this year). Tonight it finally clicked in my head....amid all of my school stress and longing to be with my someone, I've lost sight of where I'm headed and what God has called me to do. I mean, I've known that I belong in the mission field and that I was born to do this, but I've been sitting here wondering..."but God, why? Why can't I have what I want? How come I have to wait? All the other girls are married and are having kids now. When will it be my turn? Why are You requiring this of me when it hurts so bad?" I know I'm not the type to date just to have fun...regardless of how it's viewed, I just don't want to give parts of myself away like that or risk taking from someone else what doesn't belong to me. Does that mean I really have to wait for what seems like is going to be at least another 5 years before I'm granted my heart's desire? I don't want to be thirty and unmarried!

But, as is often the case, it seems that when I'm hellbent on wallowing in my own pity and doubt, God allows me to stay there until I finally see where I've come to. Tonight I think I saw that. I don't know when or where or if I will be married. It doesn't matter. There is work to be done. When I think about it, I would rather spend my life being single and following my Savior to wherever He calls me, than being married and living without Him. He may have someone planned for me. He may not. I don't know. I do know what He has given me right now. He has set a task before me, a mountain to climb, a race to run. I know He is by my side every step of the way. He loves me more than I know. How can I not give up my wishes and desires to a God who willingly gave up so much for me at Calvary?

It seems like being single should just get easier, or that you will get so used to that it won't bother you anymore. Well, you do get used to it, but that doesn't make it any easier. On the contrary, each year that passes just makes it more difficult as more and more of your friends get married and have babies and you still have to find a date to take to weddings and funerals (ok not funerals but it just seemed to fit...). That would make for an awkward first date though...."Yea that was my great aunt Laverne. She was dead for a week before they found her. So what do you do for fun?"

Seriously though, looking back over the last 6 years, it feels like I've been wishing that I belonged to someone, that I shared my life with someone, that my heart was claimed. Well, I do, and it is. You might think that sounds funny. There is no guy sitting next to me, no awesome date set for Friday night. But my heart is spoken for and I belong to Him. And that is beyond treasure, beyond enough. It is well with my soul.