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Jan 16, 2009

Haiku Friday: Cold & Crazy

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Haiku Friday
Welcome to winter!
Ten below zero tonight
without the windchill

No school for Cordy
The air is too cold. But me?
Of course I have school.

So I will put on
my paper thin scrubs to sit
with crazy people.

Oh, how I wish my clinical would be canceled in the morning. But even bitter cold can’t prevent me from spending 10 hours in a psychiatric ward. My clinical for nursing school this quarter is psych/rehab, so the first half of the quarter I’m working in an institution with patients who will probably never leave due to their serious mental illnesses.

I do find it interesting to learn more about the different types of mental illness, but 10 hours is a long time to spend there. By the end of the day, I have to do a mental status check on myself to make sure I’m not going crazy as well.

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your main blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, please let me know.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! I will delete any links without haiku!

Filed Under: clearly insane, me me me, school ·


Jan 14, 2009

30 Day Torture, Hidden Behind the Label of Fitness

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First off, thank you for coming out of lurkdom for my last post! I learned a lot from your comments, including I had no idea there were so many readers without children. I hope my blog is proving to be a good form of birth control for you – were I 22 and reading this, I’d be putting my ovaries on ice for several years.

Yesterday I had planned out a post about getting back into shape again, following the New Year’s herd and all, but was interrupted from this task due to the very thing I was going to write about.

You may have noticed a new obsession with several bloggers: 30 Day Shred is the fitness regimen that apparently half of the world has adopted. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve all watched The Biggest Loser and thought, “If these 300 lb contestants can survive a workout designed by Jillian Michaels, I should be fine!” or if Jillian Michaels is a manipulative psychic, mentally projecting her DVD into our heads as the perfect get-fit tool. Either way, I took a flying leap onto that bandwagon and bought the DVD.

I did my research first. Or, rather, I asked others what they thought, with opinions ranging from, “It’s pure hell, but it works,” to “You’ll never feel so good bitching out your TV.” Hmmm…sounds like fun, right?

The last time I tried a new workout DVD, I had less than stellar results. So of course I once again set myself up for failure with another difficult workout by one of the hardest trainers available. This time I dragged Aaron along for the torture fun.

It sounds like a simple system: 3 minutes of strength training, followed by 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of ab work. Repeat x3. Only 20 minutes total. Anyone can hold out for those small amounts of time, right?

Sure, but not when those first 3 minutes are composed of alternating 45 second intervals of push-ups and squats. I had no idea 45 seconds could take so long! And after that going directly into alternating jumping jacks and butt-kicks. There was no time for a breath, no water break, no mercy.

At several points one of us would mutter “This is impossible!” and while we considered turning it off, we kept going until the end, then collapsed on the floor from our jelly legs and arms. (Did I mention that’s just Level 1? There are 3 levels.)

And that’s how I spent the rest of the day – with Gumby arms and legs, unable to even walk up stairs without holding tight to the handrail to prevent me from sliding back down the stairs when my legs gave out.

I knew today was going to hurt. Right now I am a rigid, slow-moving shadow of my usual self. When I sit or stand up, I groan louder than an arthritic 80-year old. Everything hurts.

I keep telling myself that this is a good hurt, though – I have tested my body, and it has given me a full report of its deficiencies, which can be summarized as: if you ever do that again I will slow your metabolism to a crawl, change your digestion to send you running to the bathroom at inopportune times, force debilitating migranes on you, and put your entire immune system on strike to punish you for putting me through that.

Eh, I think my body’s bluffing. It’s been through worse – like the years I did Irish dance regularly. It can protest all it wants, but I’m not quitting. I am taking it easy today, choosing Wii Fit over 30 Day Shred, because the Wii Fit’s insults don’t hurt as much as my thighs do right now. But tomorrow it’ll be time to scream obscenities at Jillian Michaels while doing bicycle crunches.

Is anyone else using a DVD or Wii Fit to help with getting fit? If so, what are you using, and do you like it? I’m wondering if others are finding it as hard to get in shape.

Filed Under: clearly insane, me me me ·


Jan 2, 2009

Haiku Friday: New Year’s Resolutions

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Haiku Friday
My resolutions?
Eat better, exercise? Not
specific enough.

Spend more time with my
family, maybe even
be more domestic.

Look for the good, even
in a bad situation,
and be more helpful.

Prepare a facelift
for this blog – a new look for
a new year, new me.

I also will share
more stories with you – a look
deeper in my head.

Find time for lost loves:
knitting and the hum of an
old sewing machine

I want the new year
to be my best year yet – a
year of renewal.

Are you making resolutions for the new year? If so, what are they?

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your main blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, please let me know.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! I will delete any links without haiku!

Filed Under: Haiku Fridays, holidays, me me me ·


Dec 17, 2008

All I Want For Christmas Is…?

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It wasn’t until adulthood that I fully understood the stress of the holidays. As a kid it was easy – make Christmas lists asking for My Little Ponies and Castle Grayskull (I knew no gender boundaries), write Santa, craft some sentimental salt dough gift for my mom at school, try to be good, leave out cookies on Christmas Eve and open presents on Christmas Day.

I miss the old days sometimes. Especially my Castle Grayskull.

Now I have to clean the house to prepare for the onslaught of family on Christmas Day, shop for gifts, try to meet the wishes of a child who asks for such crazy things as “a yellow present and a bird present!”, wrap them, put up decorations, send out holiday cards, prepare outfits for the girls, and on and on.

But the most stressful part of Christmas for me has to be when I’m asked, “So, what do you want for Christmas?” Ummm…I don’t know.

It’s not that hard for family. I can always rattle off some gift card options like Target to buy practical household stuff. Aaron, however, is the harder one. Because while I can’t think of a single thing I really want as a gift, I still want him to get me something better than Legend on DVD. True story – that was my birthday gift several years ago. I should have read that as a sign that things weren’t going well between us at that time, because while I like Legend, I wasn’t mourning the fact that it was missing from my DVD collection.

The fault is almost entirely mine. I’m tough to shop for. Sure, I can look through catalog after catalog and point to several things that I like, but if asked if I want one of those items as a gift, I shrug and say, “Eh, I don’t like it that much.” Stuff is great, but there are few things that I really really want.

And although I try not to, I have high expectations. I want something sentimental – something to make me melt into a puddle of goo and think to myself It’s perfect! He really knows me! (Especially considering how tough things have been between us this year.) Jewelry doesn’t work unless there’s a specific meaning behind it. Electronics, while always fun gifts, don’t feel very special. And I want something special.

Clearly I watch too many romantic comedies.

I don’t mind the holidays until I’m asked what I want. Then I become depressed and wish we could jump to January 1 and bypass the whole holiday gift thing. Giving gifts is fun. Receiving gifts is a little more stressful. Don’t ask me what I want. I couldn’t begin to give the right answer.

Besides, the real answer is I don’t want to tell someone what to get me. I want to be surprised with the perfect gift. Screwed up, isn’t it? It’s no wonder we’re in therapy.

I would also point out that normally Aaron is tough to shop for, too. Wait – that’s not quite right. He’s AMAZINGLY EASY to shop for, in the sense that he has several things he wants. But a video game or horror movie aren’t very special, are they? Well, maybe a good classic Universal horror film might be special for him.

This year, however, his laptop decided that a monitor really isn’t necessary now that the warranty has expired, and so most of his Christmas budget (and any monetary gifts he gets from others) will be going into a new laptop. He can then continue working without stealing my poor laptop, which can barely keep up with the demands I put on it.

So now Aaron is counting the days until Christmas, looking at me each day in frustration and asking “What do you WANT? You’re impossible to shop for!”

Sorry, dear. Wish I had an answer for you. Is it January 1 yet?

Help me out, ladies – what do YOU want for Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, etc.?

Filed Under: Aaron, holidays, me me me ·


Dec 15, 2008

The People Who Make Post-It Notes Will Soon Love Me

By ·

I’d guess that I’m looking forward to 2009 more than the average person. With all of the bad we’ve had this year, I’m planning to consider that big ball in Times Square on Dec. 31 my executioner’s axe, cutting off all of the frustration, the anger, the worry and the heartbreak of 2008 and leaving it behind as we embrace the new year.

Which means I’d better start working on a plan for 2009.

I’m a lousy planner, I’ll admit. Something inside of me wants desperately to be organized – always aware of everything coming up and never found scraping things together at the last minute. But no matter how much I want to be that way, I eventually go back to being the girl who flies by the seat of her (worn thrice because she forgot to do laundry) pants.

One benefit of nursing school is that it forces me to organize. We are taught to prioritize and organize our day so the insurmountable mountain of tasks is whittled down to an acceptable level without the need to stay late. Prioritizing is probably the one skill out of all of the organization skills that I’ve taken a liking to.

It’s far too easy for me to hop from one project to whatever crosses my mind next, never stopping to think about if that new task is really important enough to override other items on my to-do list. That task is soon followed by another mental burst to go do something else, often leaving task #2 unfinished. (ADD much? My doctor even agrees with me now.)

2009 will be my year of the priority list. I’ve made every attempt to not turn into my mom and aunts with their neurotic ability to make list after list for everything from groceries to gift lists to who to call. But I have to admit – lists are helpful. Less helpful, though, is a jumbled to-do list that ranks throw away the Christmas lights that don’t work higher than buy cat food so your poor pets don’t walk out on you and charge you with neglect only because I thought of it first while writing.

Hopefully keeping prioritized (maybe color coded? Hmmm…might need to consider that idea) lists will help me stay on track. And we all know I need it. Like most moms, I have a lot of different hats to wear, and each has its own set of responsibilities. I’m responsible for paying the bills, some housework, Cordy’s school notices and permission slips, my schoolwork and clinical time, doctor appts. for both kids, setting up therapy appts. for Cordy, any type of appointments for me, grocery shopping, three blogs, three cats, two kids and a partridge in a pear tree. OK, the last one isn’t true. But I do have to keep the birdfeeder filled with birdseed.

(Let’s not even begin to count things I’d like to do, such as paint some of the rooms in our house and hang shit on the walls so I won’t feel like I’m still living in my old college apartment.)

Who knows? Maybe tackling tasks in an organized manner will give me a little more time in my life? I could think of a lot of uses for a little more spare time.

I could probably make a list of all of those free time ideas, too.

This post is part of the last PBN blog blast of the year, sponsored by Big Tent. Here’s hoping we all have a more organized 2009.

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Filed Under: clearly insane, daily life, me me me ·