Pies in the sky...and other tales

REASONS I AM INSANE
1. A teeny tiny little part of my brain actually thinks I can get into medical school.
2. An even teenier tinier little part of my brain thinks I can SURVIVE medical school, residency, and all that debt.
3. Although only .002% of my brain thinks I can do this, I'm still pushing ahead with a plan that is most likely unrational, unrealistic, and just plain dumb.

THINGS I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD ME ABOUT HOME-OWNERSHIP
1. When things break, you have to fix them. Otherwise, they're bound to get worse.
2. You have to mow your lawn on a regular basis or it gets very scary walking into the backyard, where just about anything could be hiding.
3. Even though it's awfully nice to sit on your ass doing nothing all day, you won't get many opportunities to do that when the washer, dryer, and dishwasher are all full at the same time, the floors need to be mopped, and the spiders in the corner of the ceiling are living the high life in their mansion webs that seem to be getting bigger.
4. There are some things that should never...EVER...be put in the dishwasher.
5. The roof will only last so long...and when that goes, the septic system and well will both jump on the bandwagon, too.
6. Wheelbarrows with three wheels are much more useful than the crappy kind with one wheel on the front - but they're too expensive so you'll have to make do with the crappy one.
7. Don't get too comfortable getting comfortable. If you get used to it being 72 degrees in the winter and 62 in the summer, you'll be expecting that kind of luxury all the time - nope, better to wear layers...or nothing at all if given the right circumstances.

An update

1. Have decided to go into the pre-med program where I work - it's easier, will allow me to adjunct at ACCC, and requires less driving than the other programs. It's also A LOT cheaper.

2. Finally realized that I need to get a social life again. I've been such a hermit for so long, holing myself up with my dog, cat, and husband (granted, not an entirely bad thing), but I had a blasty blast at the concert last weekend. Which made me realize I need to get out more. How sad is that?

3. I've lost some weight...or at least some inches. I'm almost back to my pre-married-life skinny. It helps that I'm not eating chocolate nonstop anymore. Whew! - it's good to be fab again :)

4. I'm crazy in love with my house. Sometimes I have these moments when I'm standing in the living room thinking, "OMG, we're actually homeowners!" It's definitely cool to know that you've worked for what you have, you can paint the walls whatever color you want (even...gulp!...orchid corsage), and the plants are yours to kill...er, water...at will.

5. Related to the wonders of homeownership, I often worry that we'll end up bankrupt and homeless one day. Not a problem I had with renting. Hubby works in a construction-type field and has been seriously klutzy over the last couple of years - half the time, not even at work. Like a few weeks ago, he pulled his MCL playing hockey (he's a goalie) and I panicked 'cause all I could think was, "How long is he gonna be out of work THIS time?" I need to get him insured :)

6. It's HUMP DAY!

t.

A little self-reflection...

After five days of being down with a cold, I'm bouncing back up and suffering only the residual effects (mostly a sore nose). My state of mind, however, could use a little boost so I thought some self-reflection might do the trick.

Over the last 24 hours, I finally came to the conclusion that life is not worth living when it's situated only within the frame of someone else's view - that is to say, if someone else is holding MY camera and taking the picture on which I base my actions, something needs rearranging. Here's a (completely hypothetical, of course) example:

• Let's say that I have worked somewhere for, oh I don't know, about nine and a half years and during that time, I've found it next to impossible to get the financial support I need to do the job I'm being asked to do. Then, imagine that about eight and a half years into that job, the institution for which I work hires one or two OTHER people to do jobs very similar to mine and pays them about 1.5 to 2 times what I make annually. You can imagine my (completely hypothetical) frustration when I see that resources are being poured into two new positions that recreate the wheel on which I've been steadily devoting my energy into shaping for nearly a decade, because I know that with 1/3 of those resources, I could have brought my work to a new level, thereby impacting many more people in a positive way. The frustration would (hypothetically) eat away at me, wouldn't it? It would probably make me feel run down, unappreciated, ineffective, and in some ways worthless - but ONLY if I viewed myself through the lens of the person who made those decisions. I would probably go through a phase in which I blamed the wrong people and pettily denied their right to their jobs, although they had done nothing but defer to me time and time again because at least they recognize that what I'm doing is valuable. But I would only be making the situation harder on myself if I allowed this situation to shape my response to my coworkers, friends, and place of employment. I would effectively be denying myself the right to be as happy as possible and get as much done as possible with what I have.

Good example, right? For me, it demonstrates just exactly how powerful someone else can be when you lend them your camera - even worse, when you outright give them your camera, let them do the shooting, and then hang their portraits up on the wall, where you can admire them day after day after day. You'd lose a little of yourself in the process, wouldn't you?

I've finally matured enough to accept the fact that some things can't be changed and certainly won't be changed by allowing myself to become a bitter, unhappy old coot. This, I think, is what the Buddha meant when he talked about mindfulness. This must have been what the monks who self-immolated during the Vietnam War knew all along - that you can immerse yourself in a truth so deep and encompassing that it surpasses the physical pain of living in the corporeal world, a pain that is caused by nothing more than allowing your camera to get into the wrong hands. They must have known that the wrong-intentioned world powers who were so hungry for personal gain that they would sacrifice the good of the whole were not real and could, in fact, be denied by demonstrating their un-realness.

A little too esoteric, perhaps...it's early on a Monday morning and I've probably had too much coffee. Still, I think there's some truth to the idea of just letting go of the many insidious ways I've allowed other people to get in my head and under my skin. I guess I'm reclaiming my head and my skin as my own - not a bad way to start the week :)

All those "urgent" voicemails that people left while I was laid up in bed for three days last week, all those hundreds of emails that gathered in my inbox...not critical. And in fact, while I was reading an issue of Oprah's magazine - oh, smirk if you must - there was an interesting article about this New Age-y woman named Byron Katie, who counters every self-important question with four of her own, the first of which is, "Is it true?" Thus, if I closely examine the initial thought that all these people who leave multiple messages and send multiple emails really need me, I will most likely find that it's not true. No one will die without me. And it feels pretty good to admit that.

I guess the trick is to balance your own peace of mind with the needs of others so that you don't completely devalue what someone else finds important. But at the same time, people are just so self-important, aren't we? We really believe that there's no one else who can do the job like we can, that each of us is a "unique snowflake" (Fight Club, anyone?).

Well, short of the left parenthese on my keyboard, which does not seem to be working and poses quite the problem when I'm trying to type a treatise like this one, I don't need anything just now and no one needs me. Ain't it a beautiful world?

t.

Decisions, decisions...

I'm home sick today - what I thought was a nasty bout of allergies was actually the hints of a cold...I think. Not a head cold, more like a bronchitis type of thing (though I hope it's not that bad). So I've been working a little from home and now I'm thinking even more about some new decisions I have to make.

CONUNDRUM #1: If you read my FB profile at all, you know I was accepted into LaSalle's pre-med program. Very exciting...but a little bit of a bummer because I just realized they only offer daytime courses. (DUH! That's definitely the kind of thing I should have looked at before applying.)

• PROS: It's a good program at a great school that happens to be close to the city's best teaching hospitals. Plus they have some really good experiential learning opportunities that would definitely add to the credibility of my med school app.
• CONS: I'd be missing a significant amount of work (because there's almost no way to make up those missed hours since the classes are typically 3-4 days). And it's definitely a lot of drive time.

CONUNDRUM #2: Still haven't heard back from Stockton re: acceptance or rejection into their pre-med program. I think they'll accept me, but even if they do, more decisions to make.

• PROS: I work there so I'd get a decent tuition discount, plus fitting classes into my schedule wouldn't be too difficult. I like the faculty and because I wouldn't spend a lot of wasted time driving, I'd have more time to study. (On a side note, I recently got an adjunct teaching position with Atlantic Cape Community College in Atlantic City for the fall, which wouldn't really be feasible for me if I were traveling to and from Philly all the time.)
• CONS: Inaccessible to Philly hospitals where I could get great learning/volunteer experiences. Also, being a student where I work has posed some challenges in the past - it's awkward to be sitting in class with your own students and my student personality is VERY different from my work personality.

CONUNDRUM #3: I've recently been rethinking my decision to apply to Drexel's Evening Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Med Program. I still have some materials to get in but I keep second-guessing myself.

• PROS: It's a great program within an actual School of Medicine, not to mention the fact that it's also near all the city hospitals. It's an evening program designed for the full-time working professional like me, and the curriculum is right up my alley. It's a straight two-year program with a basic course structure and all the courses are specifically for students in the program, so I wouldn't be taking undergrad courses like in the other programs. Plus, I can easily add undergrad classes into the mix for areas in which I feel a little weak (like anatomy and physiology).
• CONS: It also requires lots of driving (although probably not as much as the LaSalle program) and is more competitive to get accepted into, which means that I may wait and wait for a response only to find out it's a NO. Not that this is a huge con, but it's also situated in a very M.D.-focused school as opposed to the D.O. focus I'd like to take, so I'm unsure if there would be any inherent conflicts there.

Ultimately, I believe you make what you can out of your own education - it doesn't necessarily matter if you're not accepted into the best and most expensive program available to you, as long as you work hard and GO AFTER opportunities rather than waiting for someone to hand them to you. So I suppose wherever I end up will be where I'm meant to be and because of my commitment to this goal, I'll get a good experience wherever I go. But there is still the question of whether time and money should be my focus or location and experience should be my focus, because I don't think I'm going to get both, no matter where I end up.

Ideas?

t.

Getting back on the horse...

I've taken a couple of weeks off from studying algebra - too tired trying to figure out this "lifestyle" change (a.k.a., a diet). I have such a one-track mind - I can only focus on one thing at a time most days, which probably isn't so good for a wannabe doctor. In fact, today I was pretty sure I was losing my mind all the way around. Worst conversation of the day:

T (that's me, of course): What can I do to help? (Hubby was remodeling the bathroom.)
A (that's hubby, of course): How about you take the light bulbs out of the bathroom fixture and put them in the ceiling fans? (We were missing a few here and there.)
T: OK.
Meanders around the house looking for scissors to open the damn blister pack of new bulbs, even though I wasn't supposed to be doing anything at all with them.
A: What are you doing?
T: Taking out the new bulbs.
Hubby explains yet again what I'm supposed to be doing, adding on a small request to put the new bulbs into the bathroom fixture (since I've already opened them).
T: OK, got it.
Starts meandering again - eventually takes the bulbs out of the bathroom fixture and puts them all where they're supposed to be. Has new bulbs in hand now and is suddenly very confused.
T: What am I doing with these?
A: You're kidding, right?
I meander into the bedroom to start something on the computer that I'd been thinking about doing all week. Hubby comes back in from the garage, where he's been sawing, painting...doing manly things. Turns on light switch in the bathroom. Nothing happens.
A: Where are the light bulbs?
T: I don't know.
A: You were supposed to put the new bulbs in.
T: Ooooohhhhh, yeah. Forgot...here I go.

I swear to you, he looked at me like I had three heads. He also looked a bit worried. Then I started getting worried and thinking, "Yup, definitely losing it." His reward for all of his hard work? (Drum roll, please)...food shopping with the wife. He hates food shopping. I like to think he likes spending time with me, though :) Anyway, after we were done, we slid on over to Subway for dinner - and as I stood in line, looking at all the options on the menu board, I completely spaced out. The lady must have asked me three or four times what I wanted - I heard her, I just didn't process it; thus, I didn't respond. Granted, I was completely baffled by the guy who, along with the rest of his family, cut in front of me in line. I also couldn't hear the girl behind the counter real well - background noise totally screws with my ears. So then she asks me three times what kind of bread I want, to which I eventually responded, "Flatbread." Which made no sense because I'd already ordered a $5 footlong and the flatbread is only 6". She was pretty nice, though - she just made it without asking any questions. Except the most dreaded question of all..."What do you want on it?" Oh, Lord, I had no idea what to even say. I was just staring into those little tubs of veggies thinking...well, nothing. Completely blank. It was a real process getting dinner, I can tell you. At the counter, hubby commented on what a long day it must have been because I was completely out of it - and then I felt bad because of course he had been doing all the hard work in the humidity all day.

Once my brain stopped processing, I started thinking about how slow my synapses must be firing and then I went into this whole other state of thought - completely crazy.

Now I'm pretty much ready for bed.

t.