Measuring Out My Life in Coffee Spoons

Yard to do list.

2014-04-01T18:51:00.005-04:00

Spring is here. Finally. I think. I hope. I honestly would not be surprised if it starts snowing at any moment, just because this year's winter has been a MAJOR asshole and that's just the kind of thing he would do to stick it to us one last time.

But tentatively it's here. And with it comes the start of my first ever real adult gardening season. I have never had a yard. I have lived in apartments or the top floors of houses my whole adult life (not counting my parents house, but my mom is the garden boss there). And even if those places had yards, they would be rentals. And it's fine to fix up a rental yard, but at a certain point you wonder how much it's worth putting a ton of time and effort and money to fix up property that doesn't technically belong to you. This year I have a real, adult, QUARTER OF AN ACRE (shut up country people, for a city girl like me, that's a vast wilderness), yard that we own and can do whatever we darn well please with (except for you know, build a huge meth lab, or keep zebras in, or start a tiki bar, okay so fine there's a lot we can't do with it, but we can do whatever we darn well please that's within legal and city code boundaries).

And I have so many ideas you guys. It's like this inner gardener has just burst forth at the first chance to put my hands in dirt. I spend most of my time these days on GARDENING BLOGS (I'm pretty sure that puts me at least mentally into my 30s if I'm not linearly speaking there yet). I flew to Vegas last week (more on that later) and bought GARDENING MAGAZINES for the flight. I'm putting these things in all caps, because it is still shocking to me just how much of an old fart I've turned into seemingly overnight, and how much I EMBRACE it. See, cannot stop with the all caps. This is a momentous life change.

So our yard. I get the feeling that a dedicated gardener lived there at some point in the home's recent past. But possibly not for the last decade or so. Things have gone...awry. There are random attempts at the gardening arts, but mostly, it looks like the last owner's just looked at the size of the yard and its vast potential, shrugged, and said "eh, not for us." But there is so much potential. I look at it and envision an oasis, an eden, or at the very least a yard that doesn't look like the people who live there use it exclusively as the world's largest dog toilet.

It is going to take a lot of work, a lot of long sweaty, muddy days in the sun, a lot of time and research and money, but I am ready. I feel pumped to find my inner horticulturist. I think our yard can become a gorgeous feature of the home, and honestly we will probably be here to enjoy it for 2-3 years tops (have I mentioned our house is a little teeny?). But it's my personal philosophy that every owner of a house should leave it better than they got it. They should add to it, not detract from it, particularly in a 1920s house that in my mind deserves some respect in her twilight years. And I would love my contribution to be a functional, beautiful garden. I may fail spectacularly. In fact I know I will encounter failures, because gardening is dealing with living things that are unpredictable and finnicky. It's not like decorating a room. A couch won't wither and die on you or grow wild and take over the ottoman. Gardening, I suspect, will be a slow process full of setbacks. But I believe at the end of the tunnel it will be worth it. Or I will just be a dirt covered lady yelling at my tomato plants to behave themselves. Time will tell.

As far as this summer's to do list, here it is. I will update along the way.

1. ~~Plant vegetables in the two lovely raised beds behind the shed~~ (done and done-also it took some backbreaking work to pull out a tangle of vines and shrubs and weeds that were all over those beds-I don't think a vegetable has been planted in one for some time).

2. Tear up the old slate stepping stones (they have huge cracks between them that are full of mud) and lay a gravel path that wraps around the shed. (this is my top priority, I think it will make a massive difference in the overall look of the yard and make it seem much tidier and less accidental, and it will help with the mud, I constantly am fighting the yard's endless supply of dog covering mud)

3. Dig up the "butterfly garden" on the left side of the yard that's enclosed by metal fencing. Replace the wild tangle of weeds in there with two dwarf fruit trees (yes, yes I know we will never enjoy the fruit from these trees unless we live here more than 3 years, but I see it as a gift to future owners). I also want to plant some evergreens, and some pretty perennials like lavender)

4. Grow Morning Glory and Moon Flowers along the fence nearest the patio. I adore both of these flowers and my mother assures me they are not hard to grow along a fence.

5. Put in two flower beds along the side and back fence. Plant a tree in each (one that withstands a lot of moisture, still researching that) along with some nice evergreen shrubs (thinking boxwoods) and some other perennials.

6. Convince my handy fiance to build me a wooden planter for the patio (he's already mostly agreed) to fill with herbs. I love the thought of hanging out on the patio and being surrounded by the scent of fresh herbs (does anything smell instantly more like summer than fresh basil?).

7. Add some other patio decor (planters, cute hanging lights)

8. Hire an electrician to put in a spotlight to illuminate the patio that can be operated by an indoor switch (right now we have no lighting outside except for some poorly functioning motion sensors).

9. Buy a patio seating set (we are probably going to do this one within the next week or so-we've decided on a Martha Stewart set from Home Depot, because it's more affordable than most new patio furniture, is a really nice wicker, and well it's Martha after all)

10. Plants lots and lots of grass seed so we can possibly have a yard instead of a mudpit one day.

Whew, writing it all down like that makes it seem like, a lot. But I am confident we can pull it off. Or at least try. And fail at some of it I'm sure. But at the very least I'm confident that the yard at the end of this summer will be improved from the yard at the start of spring.

Unless a sinkhole eats it.

Five things.

2014-03-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

So I realize my first couple of posts back have been a little heavy, so I thought I would move forward with some happier things. Five happy things in my life right now to be exact.

1. This weather.

It has been a long winter, a long, long winter. Here in Richmond it's gotten to the single digits, on several occasions. This may be normal for Canadians, but this is not normal in Virginia. One morning I literally could not get my driver side door to shut and latch, because it was FROZEN solid. Same goes for trying to open my iced over windows on another morning. I don't know how many more times my car can freeze in one winter before it just cracks right down the middle. I normally don't mind winter. I love warm coats and wool scarves and cozy fireplace nights. But I am done with this particular winter, ready to kick it to the curb. Which is why the last two days have been so lovely. I have tried to be outside as much as possible, soaking in the sun. Now that I am a co-parent to a dog, one of my favorite warm day activities is exploring my new neighborhood with my dog on 4 or sometimes even 5 mile walks. I've lived in Richmond my whole life and thought I knew most of its nooks and crannies, but until you live in a neighborhood you don't really and truly know its detail and texture. I am discovering so many hidden streets nearby, and some of the most massive houses I have ever seen in this city.

2. Spin class. More specifically Tidal Wheel spin studio. I tried it out for an article I wrote for Richmond.com, Unique RVA Gym Alternatives, and as soon as I finished the first class I turned to my fiance, Rob, and said parts of that were harder than running a marathon. I may have been post-workout delirious, and that may have been somewhat of an exaggeration, but it is by far the most intense total body cardio workout I have ever experienced. Your heart rate goes up, way way up, and stays there the entire class. I always leave drenched in sweat. There is always a moment during every class where I think, I can't do this anymore, but the best part about spin class is that you are literally clipped into your bike. They make it very difficult to make a graceful exit if you want to quit. Tidal Wheel's studio is right down the street from my house so I can walk there, and it's become something I do 2-3 times a week. I always thought spin class was just biking really, really fast, but there's so much more to it than that. You do push-ups, use weights, and do all manner of crazy moves, all in a dark room with loud music and instructors so cheerful and motivating that they must down 10 shots of espresso before a class. I have zero coordination so it's a challenge for me to simultaneously pedal my feet and do other things, but that's part of the reason it's such an intense workout. I recommend it to anyone as long as you have no heart condition. Please do not do Tidal Wheel if you have a heart condition. As an RN I can safely say your heart would probably explode.

3. My local haunts. I moved out of the Fan last fall and the thing I was most sad about leaving behind was the Fan's awesome (and walkable) restaurant scene. Luckily I moved into a neighborhood with, while not quite as large, an equally delicious and convenient group of restaurants. In no particular order, my favorites are The Continental, Cafe Caturra, Super Stars, Palani Drive, Boyer's Ice Cream, Blue Goat, The Grill, and Sweet Frog. Do you see why I've had a hard time cooking frequently? As a city girl since I was in middle school, when I'm trying to think of a restaurant, I mostly focus on those in walking distance. I can never get over people who want to drive to a restaurant less than a mile away. Unless it's freezing or raining, why not make a meal even more pleasant with a little pre and post walking. I have far too many yummy options within a stone's throw of my house. And I didn't even mention the chains at Willow Lawn or the beyond incredible markets like Yellow Umbrella and Libbie Market. Clearly now you can see why I've really gotten into spin class. I need to burn those 500-600 calories in order to not gain 100 pounds living here.

4. Being an RN.

Confession, whenever I have to fill out a form that asks for profession or someone asks me, I get a little thrill of excitement to say I'm a Registered Nurse. Not a nursing student, not a new grad nurse who has yet to take my boards, but a 100% official, listed in the Board of Nursing records, licensed, honest to God, fully privileged RN. I've never been licensed in anything. My previous English degree basically gave me the authority to be a pretentious know it all whenever the topic of good literature came up. And that was it. But this degree has turned me into a nurse. And I am so proud of that. I have mentioned that my job is hard, sometimes I think one of the hardest jobs in the world (obviously some other professions make my profession look like a walk in the park, such as being a deployed solider or an astronaut who has to go outside a space shuttle to fix things). But I love it. I really do. I love being a nurse. I go to work every day knowing that what I do is important. And I leave every single day, even on the worst days, knowing I did at least one thing that helped someone. That's pretty flipping great.

5. Sherlock. I know I am late on this bandwagon. A lot late. But I'm almost completely caught up, and it's just great TV. A little silly and willing to wink at itself, but also quick and inventive, and full of Britishisms, and who doesn't love a 90 minute episode chock full of Britishisms. Also Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman may be my favorite TV crime solving pair since Scully and Mulder.

So this was a week.

2014-03-09T10:08:00.000-04:00

See what I did there? I promised to blog more frequently and then I went MIA again immediately. In my defense, fairly soon after my last blog it felt like the bottom fell out from under my feet. Not to get too much into the details, but my grandmother passed away, only two months after my grandfather. The fact that I no longer have grandparents in San Antonio is something I'm not sure how to begin to process. I know losing grandparents is part of life. I know at 28 I was lucky to still have three at the beginning of this year. But I did not expect to quite suddenly lose two of these people, who have been solidly a part of my life's foundation, since its beginning.

So I'm dealing and coping, and of course in the midst of this I get my second round of stomach virus this year.

And in the midst of all this I still have RN orientation on my unit, which I absolutely love, but which is almost always a little bit heavy and sometimes shattering.

And so I'm coping. I look forward to this week ending. It was a royally crappy week.

But life goes on. I look forward, to so many things, to warmer weather, to a brief trip to Vegas later this month with the fiance (SO NEEDED RIGHT NOW), to silly things like food truck food courts and new restaurants and spin classes, and to more major things like a certain September wedding.

Life goes on. If my work has taught me anything it's perspective. In fact it has rammed perspective down my throat, again and again. I have perspective coming out of my ears.

So I get it. I get what is a tragedy and what is part of life's natural course. But still, I miss my grandparents.

Still, it goes. I look forward. I'm still here. And I will be back more frequently, with less heavy topics I promise. I need a little silliness and triviality to focus on for a while.

Hello again.

2014-02-25T13:34:00.004-05:00

Hello there.

It's been a while.

As in since last August kind of a while. As in I dropped off the face of the Earth, went on a little journey around the universe, had several life changing events occur, and now have found my way back, back to this little blog I had so carefully tended for the better part of my 20s.

It was never my intention to be gone so long. Life simply swept me up, like an Oz-bound tornado. But I'm back now. I've missed this. Writing is one of the biggest parts of my self, and even though life has been incredible and beautiful these last few months, there's been a part of myself missing, the writer self who always yearns to over analyze and over share.

So for today I'm just dipping a toe in the water. Loosening up those creaky blogging joints. Dusting off the proverbial cobwebs. (Can you tell I've missed metaphors as well?)

For those who don't know, and even for those who do, even just for myself, a quick summation of all that has happened since last August:

1) I got engaged. To a man I love.

2) Subsequently I started planning our September wedding, a process I've thoroughly enjoyed and been inspired by, but which has been far move involved and complex than I ever could have imagined.

3) I completed a Clinical Immersion on a cardiac intensive care unit during my last semester of nursing school. I cared for the sickest of the sick. I witnessed too many lives ending, but more than a few lives renewed, hearts brought back from literal standstills, happy endings made possible my medicine. I learned so much. I grew so much.

4) I helped my fiance pick out and buy an adorable little 1920s bungalow. And in November we moved into that house together. We have been working ever since, making it lovely and our own. It has been challenging, exhausting, and rewarding. I love every inch of this house, even its flaws, and I am so happy to make it a home with my future husband and our beloved, neurotic dog Sandy.

5) I graduated from nursing school. I earned my second Bachelor's, a BSN, and then a few weeks later I took and passed my NCLEX and became an RN. I am so proud of those two letters. I still get a little flush of pride every time I refer to myself as a nurse.

6) I started a job as a pediatric nurse at a local hospital. I will be orienting until almost May with a preceptor. I've been working for seven weeks, and my experiences are hard to explain in any brief terms. But I am so happy to be where I am. It is what I wanted from my first day of nursing school, where I always kind of knew I would end up, working with kids. Being a nurse on this unit will at times be near impossible, because of the insanity, chaos, patient load, frequent admissions and discharges, because of the diagnoses of some of the children, and what they and their families face and take on so bravely. I know I will be tested, to my very limits. But I am so ready to take it on, to be a pediatric nurse. My work life will rarely be boring. It will almost always be hard. But nearly every second of every day will have meaning and purpose, and that is the reason I went to nursing school.

So that's life in a nutshell, excluding a whole host of other trivial and more minor things. But that's the loss of not blogging since August, not talking about those trivial and minor things. Those are the reason I started this blog, the reason it is named what it is, to celebrate and document the hundred thousand small moments and details that make up the texture of life. I love the little things. And I'm ready to talk about them again, to slow down this crazy life a little, to write about the things I might not remember in fifty years but will want to remember.

Life has been good lately. It's been overwhelming. It's been a million different things. And I'm read to write again.

For anyone who is still listening :)

To get you through until next Sunday.

2013-08-28T13:31:00.000-04:00

If you're like me, you live every 7 days between new episodes of Breaking Bad in a fugue state, obsessing about what just happened, wondering what will happen next, worrying to death about poor Jesse. Here are two videos to help ease your pain. No spoilers involved, in less you count how Hank and Marie react to Miley Cyrus at the VMAs or Walt's AMAZING rolling skating abilities a spoiler.

Monday musings.

2013-08-26T21:16:00.001-04:00

-Disclosure. There was a time in my preteen existence when N'Sync was probably in the top 5 things I cared about. I had posters of them on my walls. I used to have in depth conversations with my best friend, MK, about the five of them, as if they were our close, personal pals (we always wondered about Lance, even back then; Joey was the funny one we'd love to have as a friend; Justin was dreamy; Chris we didn't talk about as much). I attended two N'Sync concerts consecutive years in DC at the Verizon Center with group of middle school girlfriends. Both times we screamed so loudly we all sounded like 30 year smokers the next day. We made posters and waved them madly as we danced in our seats (of course we had spent the entire previous MONTH memorizing choreography from watching music videos on MTV (how old does THAT make me sound?), which we just knew in our hearts would impress the band all the way from our nose bleed seats to the stage. To this day I can honestly say they were the funnest, most joyous, silliest concerts I have ever been to, or probably will ever go to.

Their break up, even though I was getting older and should have been past boy band related things, was...difficult. And though I've enjoyed watching JT's career grow and blossom, a piece of my TRL loving, Bye Bye Bye choreography memorizing heart has missed them dearly. I knew they were done, would never really reunite ala the less superior BSB (there was a legit rivalry amongst our 7th grade class between BSB girls and N'Sync girls, obvi the N'Syncers were correct).

Which is why last night's brief little snippet of a reunion still managed to bring me so much joy. There's only one window in your life to love a band as much as only a preteen girl can love a boy band. It's a love that is pure and without abandon, a love that has nothing to do with being cool or hip or ironic. It's just earnest, scream your head off, cry when they descend from the stage on giant strings in a cloud of pyrotechnics and dry ice love.

-The US Open started today and that brings me almost as much joy as N'Sync. I love this tournament. I've explained at length on this blog that night matches at the Open are what solidified my deep and abiding love for tennis. There just is nothing like it when a night match creeps toward midnight and then past it, past the point when you should be asleep but you could care less, could not possibly think of turning the TV off, because you're in it, you're there in that moment, in that stadium in NYC just as much as all those people who are physically there, on the edge of your seat, living and dying with every bounce of the ball.

Plus, Nadal is healthy this year. Which makes me a very happy fan.

-I'm seeing the Beach Boys this Wednesday in Charlottesville, which I'm pretty stoked about. It's not so often you get to see living legends play a concert, and seeing them outdoors at the Cville downton mall is just the icing on the cake. Plus this concert is the first of three incredible ones I have scheduled for the next few weeks. The other two are Fun. (!) and Frightened Rabbit (!!). You may not have heard of Frightened Rabbit, because they're not that well known, but they are one of my favorite bands. Their songs are raw and gorgeous in the way it seems British bands just excel at, and I cannot wait to see them live.

-My first day of clinical immersion in a critical care unit was last week, and as much confidence as I gained this summer doing med/surg during my externship, I kind of felt like I started over there. Which is good. The best way to build confidence is to start off feeling completely overwhelmed (right? isn't that something people say?). My preceptor is a total super nurse, and I know I'll learn oodles from her. She's on the code team which means that every time someone in the hospital's heart stops, she drops everything and runs there (which means I run behind her trying to keep up). I'm sure that will become somewhat more natural with time, because right now, when I hear a code called out, it feels a lot like this:

I haven't literally hidden in a closet yet, but I know it's only a matter of time :)

Winos in the 'Ville

2013-08-18T20:41:00.001-04:00

This past weekend five of my lovely friends and I headed an hour up the road to Charlottesville to do what any sensible group of women in Charlottesville should do, DRINK LOTS AND LOTS OF WINE!!

We had ridiculously unseasonable weather for August, and it was perfect for sitting outside sipping yummy wine, even cool enough to make me crave red wine (just one sip of red wine and I got all giddy about fall). I've done a good number of Charlottesville vineyards, but this was the first time I brought picnic stuff.

I made two types of baguette sandwiches:

Turkey, sharp cheddar, and granny smith apple

And prosciutto, arugula, and mozzarella

We also brought along lots of other yummy things, cherries, grapes, trail mix, etc. to keep our wine soaked selves steady enough to power through four wineries.

We hit King Family, which was absolutely beauitful. The wines were really good too, especially a really refreshing and crisp Viognier although the tasting only included five. But you got to keep the glass! Always a bonus in my book.

Next we went to Pippin Hill, which may be my pick for most beautiful winery in Charleston (which is really hard to pick, because they're all so ridiculously gorgeous, all rolling hills and idyllic rural tableaus.

We went to Jefferson and picnicked

This was MK's face when I told her to "act natural"

Our last stop was Trump, which I want to hate because, well, it's Donald Trump. And maybe if I was a wine snob I would hate it, but I've been twice now and have thoroughly enjoyed it both times despite the giant golden T's all over the place. The wine is yummy, the view is great, the tasting includes like 13 samples (two sneak attacks that aren't even on the tasting list), and they have two sparkling wines that I love. So as much as I hate to say it, I like your winery Trump. I am still highly skeptical of you in general.

After a couple hours de-pickling in our hotel, we headed out for dinner at the Whiskey Jar (had a bangin' barbeque sandwich that was perfect after a day of drinking), where the boyfriend managed to swing by and grab a bite with us after work (we graciously allowed him and his cooties to sit with us). We made a stop at Commonwealth Sky Bar, where the scene was somewhat....less than friendly. Mostly it made me feel like an old fart, because I remember a time in my life where weekly I went to bars that were packed with people and I had to stand in line for 20 minutes just to get a drink, and I could last until the bar closed.

We were out of there my midnight. But in our defense we'd been drinking since 12pm! It's not just due to our steadily advancing age.

We did revisit our youth in one major way though, the late night junk food pig out stop. We hit up the Cook Out driveway (full disclosure, I've never been to Cook Out, now I wonder what is wrong with me to have waited so long). Their milkshake menu is INCREDIBLE. There are like 50 flavors and you can combine them, and it's just one of the happiest places in the world I think.

I got peanut butter, banana, with Reeses Cup. BOOM! Do you not want to go get one of those right this second? I wanted to find a way to live inside of that milkshake. Sadly I just ate it. All 5,000 calories of it right before bed.

And I'm not even a little bit sorry about it.

So to sum up, a weekend drinking wine (and milkshakes) with some of my favorite people on the planet in one of the most beautiful parts of our state=the perfect way to end summer before school starts (tomorrow, eek!!!)

Some things.

2013-08-15T20:27:00.002-04:00

Back from Belize. And it was as gorgeous and relaxing and beautiful as it was last year, if not more so. More on that later. But first some (random) things.

-I may be a little late to this party but Florence and the Machine's album "Ceremonials" just completely crushes me. I downloaded it a week before Belize and I almost can't handle how good it is.

Shake it Out is one of those songs I can listen to again and again and again. Do you have those songs? That one you just hit play on as soon as it's over, that you almost get a little irrationally sad over during its last few seconds, because it's that ridiculously good that you don't want it to end, you just want it to continue, be permanent. The whole album is like this. I am head over heels in love with it in a way I haven't been in love with a CD in a long time. It is a CD (does it make me old that I still call it a CD?) designed for car rides, for driving around the block a few extra times just so you can catch the end of a song.

-On the topic of soul crushingly good pop culture, Breaking Bad's last eight episodes started Sunday. I watched the first of these episodes two nights ago since Sunday night I was stuck in the Atlanta airport for 5 hours. And you guys. You guys. I just can't. Television shouldn't be this good. The last few minutes of the episode, I straight up sat upright on the edge of my bed, leaning forward, holding my breath. A unicorn wearing a poncho could have wandered into my room and I just would have given it a glance and then gone back to watching that last scene of Breaking Bad, because Breaking Bad would have been the more captivating of the two.

And Aaron Paul's Jesse Pinkman. If he does not make it through the end of the show alive I don't know if I can emotionally handle it. I don't know how Vince Villigan has made me so desperately care about a character who has made and sold meth, murdered, and done some other very bad things. But I do. Oh all I want is for Jesse to make it out of this series somehow intact.

-Tom's has tempted me all summer with its crochets and its wedges, but I've been uncharacteristically frugal and resisted. But no longer. Tonight I splurged.

So these Ikat print Toms are very similar, yes I admit. But one is light blue! And the other is gray. TOTALLY different. For example I could not wear those light blue with say, a pink top. Gray on the other hand...

Whatever. I just gave not one, but two barefoot children in Africa shoes (probably not Ikat print), so I completely justify buying both pairs.

And to my delight, I got a cool Alice in Wonderland tote bag because I spent over $75. I love me a free tote.

-Last but not least Hardywood just came out with a Blackberry beer.

I had some the other night, and it is as whimsically delicious as I hoped. I love a good fruit beer. Last year Hardywood came out with a strawberry beer so good I wanted to swim laps in a giant barrel of it. I think Abita strawberry beer is one of the most fun beers to drink in the world. Don't even get me started on the subject of pumpkin beer. So I was so excited about this blackberry business that I may have had its release on my calendar. And it did not dissapoint. The blackberry taste is actually not that strong, but it's just present enough to be a delightful little surprise in the midst of a traditional Belgian white ale

Belize bound.

2013-08-04T19:40:00.001-04:00

This is what it looks like when I pack for a week long trip.

You do not even want to know the state my room was in when I packed for 6 months in Thailand.

Overpacking issues and all, I'm pretty flipping excited about spending another week in Caye Caulker in Belize. I can't think of many places on earth more relaxing or beautiful. Last time I was there I also swam with a sea turtle, which I'm 99% positive is my spirit animal.

I also drank lots of cerveza, ate lots of ceviche, and did fun things like paddleboard, kayak, snorkel amongst coral reefs, and climb around on Mayan ruins.

I hope to do those things again this week, although honestly, I would be pretty stoked just to lay in this swing for hours and hours.

See you all in a week :) I'll be the tan and Zenned out one reminiscing about more magical memories with sea turtles.

Externing.

2013-07-30T16:31:00.002-04:00

I finished my nurse externship last week, an 8 week, paid experience where I basically got to pretend to be an RN (carefully supervised by a real RN of course).

Before summer, we found out our placements. We had been given the option of listing our preference in units, and I listed ICU, Pediatrics, and Oncology. I was then given another option to list even more preferences, and I added Labor and Delivery and ED to the list.

I can tell you where I did not want to be. I did not want to be on a Med/Surg unit.

I realize that for a non-hospital speaking person, Med/Surg doesn't really paint a very complete picture. I use the term so frequently now that I forget that once, not too long ago, I wouldn't have known what it meant either. The easiest way to explain what a Med/Surg unit is is to tell you what it's not. It's not Critical Care/ICU or the monitored step-down units that people sometimes go to after an ICU stay. It's not the Emergency Department or the OR. It's not pediatrics or L&D or mother/infant. It's not psych. It's the decidedly un-glamorous, bread and butter of hospitals, a place people go when they have pneumonia or a kidney infection, when they have a GI bleed or are experiencing weakness or dizziness. It's not specialized and it's not high acuity. And for those reasons, among nursing students at least, it's not exactly desirable for an experience like an externship.

It doesn't have the fast paced excitement of the ED, the critical machine filled high drama of an ICU, the cuddly babies of Mother/Infant. It's not glamorous. It's just where the majority of people go when they need to be in hospital.

And course, if you haven't already guessed, when I got the call about my externship placement, I was told that I would be placed on a Med/Surg unit. The unit also has a few hospice beds, but it's mostly Med/Surg, full of people with UTIs, diverticulitis, unexplained fevers and infections, and a whole host of other "Med/Surg" issues.

I was less than pleased. The majority of our junior year clinicals were Med/Surg. I knew I didn't want to work on a Med/Surg unit after graduation. I was done with it. I didn't feel like it's where I would benefit the most from over a summer there. I resigned myself to it, put on the best attitude and outlook I could, but I was disappointed and deeply envious of the externs I met at orientation who were going to be in the ICU or ED or some other far more exciting sounding unit than mine.

8 weeks later, and I can say definitively that I was more wrong about my outlook on this unit than I have been about almost anything else in nursing school. 8 weeks later, and I can say that I am deeply, deeply grateful for my placement, for where I've been this summer.

Part of it was my preceptor, who was fabulous. She's a tremendous nurse, for starters, the kind of thorough, warm, efficient nurse I hope to be. But she's also the kind of personality I learn best from, someone who is kind and encouraging, who teaches firmly but is nowhere near the drill sergeant/pit bull/stereotypical nurse who eats her young model. I don't learn best when I'm scared and intimated and sure that any second someone is going to yell at me. That's why I didn't go into the military. Well that, my total lack of upper body strength, fear of bullets/bombs, and maybe a few other reasons.

But it was also, to my great surprise, the unit. This place I had dreaded turned out to be one of the best learning experiences of my life, and by far the best learning experience of nursing school so far. I think back to where I was in early June and where I am now, in terms of my confidence and skills and it's shocking. I'm not there yet. I still have a long way to go. But I feel closer in a way I never felt even after an entire semester of clinicals.

I realized something this summer. Med/Surg, that scary phrase that I used to find so unappealing, is the backbone of nursing. There's a reason our year-long junior level class is called Med/Surg in most nursing schools (we call it Adult Nursing Science, just to be fancy). It's the foundation of nursing. It's all the things that can go wrong with the human body, not catastrophically wrong enough to go straight to the ICU, but wrong enough to be in the hospital, enough for patients to be sick and miserable and scared, and in need of someone to care for them. It's young people and old people (okay fine definitely more old people). It's patients who are absolutely nuts, patients who are mean and angry, patients who are wonderful and grateful.

This summer I took care of patients at the end of their lives as well as their families (I realize now that at the end of people's lives, you care for them of course, but at a certain point, near the end, they don't need you anywhere near as much as their families do). I took care of young kids, younger than me, with chronic illnesses, kids who despite the shitty fortune of having to be sick on and off their whole lives and having to face fear the likes of which I cannot understand, were also still kids, 20 somethings who could be silly or sweet or petulant, and who liked to watch Netflix on computers and stockpile snacks in the patient kitchen. I took care of 90 somethings whose minds were taken completely by dementia, who were sometimes sweet and affable and sometimes frighteningly angry and mean (you would be surprised the strength a 90 year old can have). I also took care of 90somethings who looked 20 years younger, who were sharp and bright, and at that age, didn't suffer fools lightly. I've cared for people who within minutes of entering their room would suddenly be sharing these intense, deep memories or feelings, who opened up to me utterly and completely.

I've seen really unfair things, people too young with terminal diseases, and I've also seen infuriating things, people who destroyed their own bodies, who were dying because they were never able to overcome addiction. I've laughed with patients. With others I've tried to hold back my own tears. I've comforted and taught. I've cleaned so many bottoms and changed so many diapers you would not believe. I cannot even begin to emphasize just how much poop I was involved with this summer. Mountains of it. But I also realized, over 8 weeks, that it is nothing for me to change a diaper or sheets. And for someone who is trying to hold onto some dignity, it is so much more for them, to be clean, to be taken care of and not forced to wait because I'm hoping a PCT will do that job for me. Nursing is so much more than changing bedpans and sheets, even though some people may not realize that. But that doesn't mean that changing bedpans and sheets is below a nurse. Those may be "tech" jobs, but they're also nursing jobs, because they are so fundamental to caring for someone, for making sure someone has dignity and a healing environment. I hope to God that no matter what kind of nursing I do, I never feel like I am above that.

They're have been moments this summer that have been infuriating, patients who confuse the word "nurse" with "waitress", and use their call bells over and over again with requests like they want their lunch tray moved or their pillows rearranged, ignorant of the fact that a nurse on a Med/Surg unit has FIVE patients, sometimes more, and that down the hall we might have a patient who can't breathe or who has a stat lab due that could affect their treatment plan. (please if you are in a hospital, please, please, if it's something that can wait, something that is truly not affecting you, please just wait until the nurse comes in your room to ask instead of using that Godforsaken call bell).

Nearly every shift this summer has been hectic and crazy. After 13 hours spent almost entirely on my feet walking from room to room, I sometimes barely had the energy to shower when I got home, much less make dinner. I've had victories (getting an IV is still exciting) and I've also failed at things (missing an IV still stings). I've connected with some patients instantly and wonderfully, while others I've struggled to reach. As a nurse people tend to drop down barriers for you. Whether it's because you have to disimpact them (I'm not going to explain that, if you don't know you don't want to) or if you're just in the room while they're having a family discussion, people tend to be so much more vulnerable around you if you're a nurse. And sometimes that can be painful, like when you witness family members say goodbye to loved ones, and the rawness of it all just feels like too much. But often and usually simultaneously with the pain, it's a privilege, to see people in a way people rarely are with each other.

The whole point of all of this is to say that I'm grateful, in a way I did not expect, for where I've been the last 8 weeks. I was a nursing student who thought I knew what Med/Surg meant, who thought I would learn so much more somewhere more "glamorous" or "exciting" like an ICU or ED. But I can't imagine now spending this summer anywhere else. Even with all the poop, with all the patients who were nuts or who were mean and demanding, with all the insanity and sadness, I'm so thankful for this experience. I'm not a nurse yet. There's so much about it that still scares the crap out of me, so much I still have to learn. But I'm closer. These 8 weeks brought me so much closer, and they made me understand that what's important in a hospital isn't the unit name on the wall. It's the people you work with, the patients, and the care you put into it.

You're welcome.

2013-06-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

This youtube video came up during a conversation at work today and we all immediately needed to see it. And it was as awesome as it sounded.

Happy Tuesday.

Summer.

2013-06-24T11:25:00.005-04:00

Unsurprisingly summer break has absolutely flown by and I cannot believe it's almost July. The last three and next five weeks are going to be crazy busy because I'm doing my nurse externship (full time shadowing an RN basically), continuing my tech job at VCU, continuing my freelance work with Richmond.com, and somewhere in there trying to have a life and do fun things (and you know, sleep).

Even though it's busy it's been really good. Some of the things that are making my summer happy right now.

-My externship. I cannot stress how physically and mentally tough this has been already (I have to be super vague thanks to my paralyzing fear of the HIPPA police), but in two weeks I've had my first experiences with "after care" (if you don't know what it is, just think about it for a while), physically combative patients, verbally combative patients, and so, so much poop (to be accurate these are by no means my first experiences with poop in the hospital, approximately 50% of nursing school is poop related). I've worked my first 13 hour shifts (they're techincally 12s, but not one of these have I actually been at the hospital less than 13 full hours). But it's also been wonderful and challenging and engaging. For the first time I get to really be the nurse (nursing students are about half nurse, half tech). And even though it's been so, so hard it's also been so, so rewarding, and I've feel like I've learned so much already and it's only two weeks in. Also my preceptor and all of the nurses on the unit are fabulous and incredibly welcoming and supportive. I was so anxious when I found out what type of unit I was going to be placed in for the summer, and now I couldn't be more thankful for it.

-Wimbledon. My second favorite tennis tournament starts today (those night matches at the US Open tip it just slightly past Wimbledon), and even though I'm going to miss a lot of it, when I do have a day off my priority will be to soak up as much tennis as possible. I love Wimbledon, and it just exudes the feel of summer to me. It's like watermelon, tied inextricably in my sense memory to hot, humid days and fireflies and the smell of bug spray. Wimbledon was in the background of so many beach trips in my childhood, green grass on the television during rainy days stuck inside, watching Agassi and Sampras during lunch breaks from the beach, with wet hair and sand on my toes. I love it for the tennis, but I also love it for that perfect, undiluted feel of summer it carries.

(Also side note. I HATE how the media has thus far turned the focus of this epic, historical two week tennis tournament into a gossip fest about Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. It's a cheap, tacky topic and it doesn't deserve to be the main headline here)

-Breaking Bad on Netflix. Holy shit you guys. I mean really. Holy shit. That is the only way I can think to describe this magnificent show. I watched the first season once upon a time and always pledged that I'd get caught up after I missed the next few seasons. I took my sweet time, but now that I am finally watching the entire series, I cannot believe I've lived the last few years without watching this show. I am prone to hyperbole yes, but I think this may be one of if not the greatest shows ever put on television. The writing, the acting, the way it's shot. It manages to be pitch black but still have this raw heart beat of humanity in every scene. You still hope desperately for these characters, even when they do horrendous things. It's just magical. And Aaron Paul as Jesse. I've never been more concerned or heartbroken over a fictional character as I am about Jesse Pinkman.

-Looking forward to Belize in August. June and July this summer are all about work. August will be about a last few weeks of relaxation (with a little work) before school starts again. One of those weeks will be spent here:

Doing a whole lot of this:

Rob and I are going back to Belize for a week of sun, swimming, relaxing, plus lots of cerveza and ceviche. I think it's just right that my summer will be bookended by two Central American vacations, one full of backbreaking labor and volunteerism and one the polar opposite, all about taking it easy and relaxation. I love both types of these vacations, but after 8 weeks of lots and lots of hospital time, I think I'm going to be in desperate need of beautiful, sunny Belize.

Nicaragua Part Three: The Build and The End

2013-06-10T13:03:00.001-04:00

I've set up the location and the characters of my Habitat trip to Nicaragua, but I've saved this third and last post for the part that mattered the most, the reason we were there, the build. I've had people ask me why I would choose to spend my "vacation" along with a good amount of money to go perform manual labor for a week under the hot sun in a developing nation. I've gone on builds three times now, and each of them has been hard and exhausting and dirty and blister provoking. But I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I would do it again, and again, and again after that.

I've been really freaking lucky and blessed when it has come to travel. From 18 to 24 I traveled a lot, from studying abroad in Paris to a graduation present trip to India to 6 months in Thailand to many more trips between. I did all of this travel for me. And these places and experiences gave me everything. They gave me so much that at a certain point, I realized the scales were tipping dangerously. I had been given so much by travel, but I had given so little back in return.

And so I made a decision and a promise that I would start to give back with my travel. It would still be partly selfish of course, because I would be able to go see new and beautiful places and make lovely memories. But at least there would be some balancing of it all, some contribution on my part. That promise began with Haiti, and as hard and tremendously sad as that trip was, it flipped a switch in me, almost an addiction. There's so much poverty and suffering in this great, wide world, and the more you see of the world the more you realize it. And for someone who has a hard time accepting those truths, who finds it so profoundly unfair that so many people have so little while others have so much, there's nothing more satisfying or soothing as being able to physically put a dent into that poverty and injustice, even if just a tiny dent.

I'm not sure I would even know how to travel to a place like Haiti or Malawi or Nicaragua without sifting sand or mixing cement or hauling cinder blocks. Habitat uses the phrase "sweat equity" to describe what is expected of the families they build houses for, but it also applies to us, the "unskilled laborers". What we do on a build is not heroic or even particularly grand, but it's something. It's something you can feel and touch. It's the blisters on your hands, sweat in your hair, and a layer of caked on dirt on every inch of your skin. It's simple and small and honest, but it's something. And for the rest of my life, I will seek out trips like these. For the rest of my life I will be a proud supporter of Habitat.

People in the US know Habitat. I knew what it was before my first trip. To be 100% honest I've never volunteered with Habitat domestically (although I hope to soon!). I knew its general mission and thought it was great. But what I've seen that Habitat does internationally makes me a fervent believer. It's international aid done in a way that it's not always done. First of all Habitat has branches in each of the countries it works in. These branches are not staffed by Americans, but staffed by locals. They have local CEO's, local coordinators, local everything. They run the show. Habitat is organic in the sense that each country runs it slightly different. The houses built are different, and even the way the houses are built is different.

Too often international charity is impatient and arrogant, even if it's well intentioned. It's a mindset that NGOs or non-profits can go into a country on a white horse, independently hand out whatever is needed, whether it's money or supplies or religion, and leave as heroes. That sounds great, but it isn't sustainable. It doesn't really fix or change anything. For an NGO to make an impact in a country it has to become a part of that country. It has to slowly and patiently put down roots and make partnerships and develop and grow in sync with the culture and environment.

From what I've seen in Malawi and Nicaragua Habitat excels at that. Other than our team leader, every Habitat person we worked with was Nicaraguan. Because Nicaraguans are the only ones that are going to really understand what Nicaraguans need. This build was different from my Malawi build in that we didn't go in and work on an entire house. One of the ways Habitat Nicaragua has developed is by realizing that the way people in Nicaragua build homes is not all at once. People build as they can, as the money allows, in increments over years. Our build was in a neighborhood in Managua that Habitat has a large project in. The two primary sites we worked on were homes of two families who already had one Habitat "room" built on their properties. Houses in Managua are often clusters of small buildings around a central courtyard. Each of these families had original homes (really just one or two room structures) that fit the international standard of inadequate (dirt floors, scrap metal walls). Habitat houses are not just gifted to the families but rather offered as an affordable, no or very low interest loan. Both families had been able to pay off their first Habitat structure and so were ready to add on another. In this slow and incremental way, the families could eventually have homes that were solid, dry, and safe. It's the kind of aid that would frustrate some people, because it's very slow. But it's what works in Nicaraguan culture, and so it's what Habitat found a way to provide.

Our big team (13 people) split into two teams, and each took a different site. Ours was for a large, multi-generation family (a mother and a father who had several daughters ranging from early 20something to little kids). One of those daughters (who could easily have been 18 or 19, Nicaraguan women start families early) was married and had two young children. All of these people lived in the "compound."

The start of the family's new room in the walled in compound. The scrap metal structure right behind it is the latrine.

Justin, little hellraiser and grandchild of the older generation couple who lived here at the door of the family's original

house

More of the family on our site

The other half of our team worked on a house for a similar, multi-generation family. The type of construction that Habitat does in Nicaragua is cinder block homes that are very, very reenforced. As I mentioned before Nicaragua is very seismically active, and there was an incredibly destructive earthquake in Managua in 1972. For this reason it's very important that the houses Habitat builds are solid and secure. The type of work we did on this build was very different and a lot more physically demanding than my Malawi build. In Malawi we used brick and did not do anywhere near as much rebar work. We also didn't have to mix the cement ourselves, because there were a dozen teenage boys around at any time who would do that for us. For this house we sifted the sand, mixed our own cement (by hand thank you) and spent a very large amount of time tying rebar (for non-construction minded people, a single row of rebar is composed of two long metal rods side by side that runs the length of the four walls of the house, the two rods are tied together with smaller bent metal rods).

Mike and Sahana tying rebar like champs, after it's tied the rebar goes into a row of cinderblocks and which is then filled with concrete, this reenforces the house

Cutting rebar, despite my thrilled expression this was really, really hard

Mixing cement using child labor

Bending rebar, this was also much harder than my happy expression would suggest

We also helped our mason, Dellis, with the actual construction of the house. I didn't put any cinder blocks on the rows, because to do that you had to balance them precariously in the air and thread them through a vertical piece of rebar (I so would have ended up knocking myself out with a cinder block). But I did fill in the gaps between the cinder blocks with cement. Once the house got tall enough they put up the world's most precarious scaffolding, and so filling in cinder blocks became even more adventurous.

Sahana and Edward mortaring away

Up on the scaffolding with Dellis, trying to make him proud as always

If you know me it may not come as a surprise that I don't do a ton of manual labor. I work out yes, but I do not spend my days lifting heavy objects and shoveling and bending metal. Habitat build days are exhausting. We worked our butts off every day. In fact we worked our butts off so much and so fast that we ended up ahead of schedule (that's why we owned our name Team Lightning). We did as much as we could with this house (it still needed a roof and a floor but both of those had to wait for Dellis to finish up the fancier, more technical things we couldn't help with), and so we ended up starting work on two more build sites.

One of those build sites was literally a field. Nothing had been started. And two other guys on our team and I (that's right, I was the only lady) got the lovely task of starting the foundation. Now I know squat about construction, but I figure that in the US digging foundations is done by some kind of machine thingy. Not so in Nicaragua on a Habitat build. We were there to be unskilled labor, and by God did we Labor with a capital L on this project. I'm pretty sure that ditch digging used to be a sentence for criminals. I don't think I've ever done anything more exhausting other than run a marathon. In about two hours, in 98 degree weather and absolutely no shade, we took this plot of land:

Those are all Habitat houses in the background

To this:

I'm not sure if the picture can convey what literal back breaking labor this was. To give proper credit the three of us had ample help from Selim and another Habitat worker. Basically one person (this I did not attempt) would hack away with a pick axe (because soil is not soft despite what you may think) and then three of us would jump in and shovel the shit out of it. The only way I didn't collapse or have to stop is because what I lack in arm strength (a lot) I make up for in sheer stubbornness.

The next day we also got to experience the joys of manual tamping (you have to tamp down the soil of a foundation to make it even, also something that I think is normally done by machines). The tamper is basically a giant metal tool that weighs at least 50 pounds that you repeatedly smash into the ground with force. Not easy. When I went to take the tamper from one of the Habitat guys, he looked at me with skepticism (he hadn't been there to witness my incredible shoveling skills) and said it would be too hard. One of my proudest moments on the trip is that John (the 30 year veteran LA fireman and former Marine), looked at the Habitat guy and said "oh no, she's better than most men." Again I have almost no arm strength (I'll never forget the health fair in high school where there was a machine that gave you a numerical reading for how strong your grip was and one of the seemingly frail, elderly teachers had a higher score than me), but when I go on Habitat trips I am absolutely there to work my butt off. It's exhausting and dirty and so, so sweaty, but I can't describe the exhausted sense of satisfaction you leave with after working so hard all day. Every time I come home from one of these trips I briefly consider switching careers to something involving outdoor manual labor like construction (and then I remember who I am).

(Funny side note: On one of our first days of the trip we were all working doing various tasks, and the family was doing their usual domestic things. Our team leader Edward said that his favorite politically incorrect joke to make on Habitat trip is that it is a complete role reversal from what it's like at home, all these "white" people doing construction while the Central Americans watch from inside their houses).

You may have read up until this point and thought Sweet Jesus, why would anyone go on a trip where they physically exhaust themselves in extreme heat for a week? But there was so much more to our trip than shoveling and tamping and tying rebar. I can't believe I've written this much without talking about the kids.

On volunteer trips like these, I think the kids are always one of the best parts. And no matter where you go there will be kids. We didn't have quite the horde of children here that we did in Malawi, but there were still plenty of them. Most of them were part of the family but they also had various little friends and neighbors over. They didn't speak any English. Most of us spoke very little Spanish. Yet when it's kids you usually realize quickly that it doesn't matter much. Games and coloring and songs and being silly are universal.

And you guys, Nicaraguan children are ridiculously cute. Most of the week we tried to think of discreet ways to steal a few of them and take them with us.

By the end of the week I think we all felt bonded and connected to these families. Even with the language and cultural barrier, there's no way to leave a week like this and not feel a connection. Some of the older members of the families were a little shy at the start of the week but on day 5 they were right there next to us, shoveling cement and laughing at funny things that happened. I think I forget on these trips just how much these houses mean to the family, because selfishly the house and the build mean so much to me, are such a gift to me, that it's easy to forget who it's really impacting. But I was reminded forcefully of what it means to these families during the dedication (a Habitat build always ends with a dedication). For both of our sites one member of the family was given an opportunity to speak, and both women who did got choked up when she was saying what that week meant for her family. One of the coolest part about the dedication is that both families asked each member of our team to go inside the new houses (with brand new spanking floors on our last day-we mixed like 10 batches of concrete and cement for those floors) and write a word or phrase on the walls.

I was so surprised and touched by this, that they would want a word written permanently on their house from a bunch of American strangers who they'd only known for a week. They'd welcomed us, in every sense of the word, into their homes and their lives, and I'm so in awe of that welcoming and generosity. I know we were there to "help" them, but on trips like these it's not that simple or straightforward. It feels so much more mutual, because everything we give we get back exponentially.

Gracia for grace in Spanish, Elisa is my Nicaraguan name given to me by the kids

The nearly finished house with our super snazzy decorations (we spent hours trying to get these to work, let's just say it was extremely windy

Once we'd finished with the dedications and blessings and tears, we ended the week as any good week should end, with a dance party, games, and a pinata. Nicaraguan kids go nuts over pinatas. And they are so good at it! Even like the two year olds knew how to hit the stuffing out of it with a blind fold on.

Dancing, to Gagnam Style, naturally

I write about these trips, and I wonder if I come close to really describing them, to a true explanation of what they are and what they mean. I'm not sure if I have or if I even could. But ultimately the word I took away from all of this, the word I would write on my own little internal cinder block wall, is gratitude. I am so grateful for this trip, for the people I built alongside and played with and learned from. I bring a lot back from trips like these, but I also leave a piece of myself. It's not a choice. You can't go somewhere like Managua on a Habitat trip and not lose a little sliver of your heart and soul. Although maybe lose is the wrong word. Because I know exactly where that piece of my heart is. I feel it as it beats. It's in every cinder block of that house, in the mortar, the people I met. It remains there, always. And so much of there, so much of Nicaragua, remains with me. Always.

Nicaragua Part Two: The Characters

2013-05-26T12:36:00.001-04:00

(Team Lightning aka half our group, I don't have a full group picture yet unfortunately)

There was a recurring joke within our Habitat group about starting a new business called "Stranger Vacation", where the point would be to send people on vacation with total strangers. And if you've never been on a trip like this, you might think that was the most God awful idea possible. To me that's why I personally have serious doubts about how "fun times" a cruise would be. Because why on Earth would I want to be stuck on a boat with hundreds of people I don't know?

But the thing is, and I cannot stress this enough, some of my best and most lovely travel memories, the ones that rest in a special place in my heart, are from trips with total strangers.

This trip was not a total stranger vacation for me, because I went with my best friend, Mary Catherine, which was great because we haven't traveled together in years. But aside from her, everyone on this Habitat trip was a big question mark until the moment we arrived. We sent out bios and pictures and exchanged a few emails. I spoke on the phone with our trip leader once. But I didn't know any of these people.

Depending on your worldview that might sound like the worst possible idea, going to a foreign country with a group of anonymous names and faces. For all I knew there could be serial killers or sociopaths or something really terrifying like mimes on the trip. But if I've learned anything it's that in situations like this you just trust the universe and jump in. So far I've done some variations of a "stranger vacation" in Paris, Thailand, and Africa; and I've left every one of those experiences with new friends, people I never would have met otherwise who will always be important to me for sharing these places. And I have never once had to share a room with a mime.

So after all that preamble, I present to you the 12 strangers (plus some more)...picked to build a house...work together and have their lives not taped...to find out what happens...when people keep being polite...and start getting smelly

(On a boat on Lake Nicaragua for our R&R day)

Edward: Our fearless leader. Irish by birth and current Californian. Edward had the fun job of getting the same question asked by 12 different people several times a day (most recurring ones, "When is dinner?"and "Can we get a McFlurry?". He also was responsible for our team selection, and he ensured that no crazies (or mimes) got included in the group. I imagine that being a team leader for Habitat is some weird hybrid of camp counselor, drill sergeant, and travel agent. Edward handled all his responsibilities wonderfully and never once seemed stressed out by it (must be the California thing). Plus the man understands the importance of a delicious ice cream treat.

David and Joey: Lovely father and son team from Philadelphia. Joey is 19 and I am always amazed when 18 or 19 years olds go on these trips. When I was 19, I had never traveled internationally and I got lost regularly in Charleston, SC (it's a city on a peninsula, water is literally where you end up in three directions). Joey did as well as any adult on the team, and I credit his dad, David, a lot for that. David was also my partner in rebarring one day and together with our other teammate, John, we came up with an ingenious strategy to cut three pieces of rebar at once (it shall henceforth be known as the David, Liz, and John Method).

Lyn: Fabulous LA producer with a glamorous life. If I were a fabulous LA producer I would be the biggest diva in the world and shout out demands for caviar and champagne at my peons. Lyn was open, down to earth and completely ready to shovel or tie rebar or so any of the other very non-glamorous, non-diva tasks we had to do. Plus she brought 50 pairs of eyeglasses with her (she's not really blind, her friend runs a charity that gives away reading glasses to people in developing countries), and she affably and good-naturedly put up with those glasses first being a day late (along with all her luggage) and then being held hostage by Nicaraguan customs. The end result, when she gave out those glasses to women at the home of a community leader, was absolutely beautiful.

Lisa: NYC lawyer and mom of the group. One of the few lawyers I've been around (and I say this lovingly as approximately 90% of my family is lawyers) who doesn't act or talk like a lawyer. She has asthma and the perpetual cloud of dust we worked in (my lungs are coated with dirt) took its toll, but she hung in there like a trooper. She's traveled and lived a lot, and I loved listening to her stories of exotic safaris in Africa or meeting Joe Biden (slightly less exotic but a really great story).

John: At the end of the week, we all got superlatives and John was absolutely a non-brainer for "Best Team Player." John is a retired LA fireman and former military, and just an all around great human being. He made sure we were all safe and okay in a fatherly way, translated for us (his parents are Mexican so he's bilingual), worked his butt off in the 98 degree weather (he was my partner in ditch digging), and even brought candy and pencils for the kids from home. Just a really awesome guy.

Robyn: Robyn is a high-powered NYC banker, and in my mind, that is incredibly scary and intimidating (I picture lots of yelling in board rooms because my only real banking reference point is movies and Monopoly). But in yet another example of how you can never get a sense of a person on paper alone, Robyn turned out to be a warm hearted, fun, and hilarious girl that was in no way intimidating or scary. Plus she's traveled all over the world and competes in dance tournaments. And she could talk for hours about dessert, which is always the mark of a good person.

Sam and Shwan: Another set of friends on the trip. Both just graduated with Harvard MBAs, and so clearly ridiculously intelligent and ambitious, but also really, really funny and easy going. Sam is also a giant in Nicaragua (the men there are generally not very tall and he is very tall), but a gentle giant who struck up an adorable friendship with one of the little boys on the site named Samuel. Sam is also the one on our trip who got locked in the bathroom on our slightly disastrous dinner I wrote about in my last post (doesn't that story become even funnier when it's a very tall man locked in the bathroom?), but he took that and everything else with good humor. Shwan went to Berkeley and so has that easy going Californian thing to offset what I'm sure is scary intelligence. Both of these guys are engaged and could not have shown more adorable love than when they talked about their fiances back home.

Mike: An engineer and another very smart person (Habitat Global Village trips draw in some really ambitious, driven personalities, with some creative, free spirit, quieter types thrown in for good measure (can you guess which one I fall into?). Mike was one of the first people MK and I met when we arrived and he was the last one we said goodbye to at the Houston airport (after dinner at Chile's when we all got really excited about being able to drink tap water again). He was our group photographer, one of the hardest workers (and best at all that technical construction stuff that I kind of just winged until our mason corrected me), and one of the funniest people on the team.

Sahana: Sahana was MK and I's third roomie, and I absolutely love this girl. She's 19 but so together than it makes me a little ashamed of my 19 year old self. She's a lifelong vegetarian, child of Indian immigrants, and doesn't drink (and she goes to University of Georgia, you practically get drunk there just walking around). She seems to be completely herself, which again is no mean feat at 19 years old (or any age). She competed with Robyn for biggest sweet tooth on the trip, and as her roomates we had access to a ridiculous assortment of yummy food. She was also hands down the best shopper on the trip, especially since our two market trips were timed (15 minutes for the first and 45 for the second, as Sahana joked it was just like the Amazing Race). MK and I are already planning a trip to Athens to see her again, and pretend we're 19 year old college students again (rooming with a 19 year old also made me realize how old I am, because I was ready for bed at like 9pm every night, and when I was 19 9pm was when I started to get ready to go out for the night).

MK: Okay so this "stranger" I've been best friends with for more than 20 years. But this was the first time I'd done a trip like this with Mary Catherine, and her first trip to any "developing" nation. And for her first trip like that she did absolutely awesome. It's hard now to remember, but I know the first time I went to a non-Western, poor country it was a shock to the system. It's hard to adjust to a place that is nothing like anywhere you've ever been. MK did fabulously and jumped in with enthusiasm and flexibility (or flexibilidad, as was our trip logo). I'm very proud of her.

The rest of the characters were not part of our American team, but were Nicaraguans who worked with Habitat and quickly became a part of our group by the end of the week.

Juan: The foreman at our site (we split into two build sites for the week, with a 3rd and 4th added by the end of the week because we were just. that. good.) Juan was everything a foreman for a Habitat team needs to be, helpful, gentle, and incredibly patient. I'm sure the temptation is there to call us all imbeciles on a regular basis, but he never did, even when we messed up. Juan was a big bear of a guy, and a ball of positive energy. And from what I've heard an excellent salsa dancer.

Dellis: The mason on our site. Dellis did not speak much English, but that didn't stop him from speaking in long torrents of animated Spanish when he showed us how to do something (it is amazing how you can learn to do something from someone even when they don't speak your language). For both of my Habitat trips thus far there's been a similar relationship with masons; grudging and a little impatient at first (like when we fill the wrong hole with cement or have to be shown how to tie rebar 7 times), growing to bemused by mid week and finally what I perceived as affection by the end (that or they're just really happy we're leaving). It must take a lot of patience to be a mason on a build site staffed by unskilled gringos. Half the time I'm sure all he wanted to do was kick us all out and redo everything. But Dellis let us try and learn, always watching over our shoulder to make sure we didn't make any real mistakes. He was an excellent boss.

Dellis in the middle, patiently bemused as ever

Vittoria: One of the lovely Nicaragua Habitat employees who took us to Granada at the end of the week. Vittoria is one of those Latin women that is so gorgeous you kind of don't want to stand next to her. But she's also a sweet and fun lady who is crazy about her two beautiful daughters, and someone who clearly loves her country and is trying to do everything she can to make it a better place.

Selim: I saved the last spot for Selim, because he deserves it. Selim is the Nicaragua Global Village in-country coordinator, which basically means that for the Habitat groups, he takes care of everything, from lost luggage to feeding us to our security to chaperoning late night McFlurry runs. He was there with us almost the entire week, from the airport on (the guy doesn't get any time off). Salem is the kind of guy who is part-bullshitter, part utter sincerity, and you honestly don't which version you're getting but don't care that much. He's 25, a volunteer firefighter, and has studied law (in addition to his almost 24/7 job with Habitat). He was that teasing, comforting camp counselor presence, but he also could switch to body guard mode in an instant. On our first full day when we went to a baseball game, we needed to use the bathroom, and a few steps behind us was Selim. When we went to the market, he herded us like children and you couldn't go a few feet without seeing him standing there, making sure everything was okay (I swear there were 5 of him). Everywhere we went he knew people (he might have actually been the mayor). He was our fixer (when the restaurant undercooked chicken and locked Sam in the bathroom, Selim was displeased to say the least-as a result we got a free shot of rum). He was also our translator, medic, historian, tour guide, and friend. I've decided that if you want a list of some of the best examples of incredible human beings in this world, look up the Habitat Global Village coordinators in each country. Our one in Malawi, Jacqui, was equally spectacular. They're people who are passionate for the betterment of their nation, and who are willing to work in the trenches, in a not so glamorous job, to do that.

Selim with two of the adorable girls who lived in the house we were working on

So those are the characters, the people I spent the week in Nicaragua with. I'm a relatively shy person, and you would think that would make me avoid situations where I'm thrust into a situation almost entirely with strangers. But I love it. It is ridiculous how quickly you bond in these situations. By the second day we all already had inside jokes. By the end of the week I felt like I knew these people, really knew them, in a way that in the outside world sometimes takes months or even years (there are people I've been in school with for almost three years who I know less about their lives than some of these people I knew for a week). It is one of the reasons I will always be eager to join a Habitat trip or a trip like it, because these trips and these people stay with you. You can't share this kind of experience and not be connected.

I obviously love traveling with family and friends as well, but there's something about "stranger" trips (or mostly stranger trips). My memories from these experiences are different, a little more vivid and enduring. Maybe it's because the experiences feel so different from every day life, with people who aren't in your everyday life, that when you come home, those memories feel more contained and resilient. You aren't just remembering a place or an experience, but a group of people, strangers who improbably become friends. It becomes this collective memory, because you know that there are 12 other people out there who shared their experiences, who are remembering it too. The memory and the people become inextricable, tied together always. And I am so thankful for that memory, and for these people.

Nicaragua Part One: The Setting

2013-05-23T16:24:00.001-04:00

When I flew to Managua, Nicaragua for a Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip, I had no idea that the city I was flying into, for all extents and purposes, no longer exists.

The center of Managua, the city it began as, was all but destroyed in a 1972 earthquake. This is not all that surprising. What did surprise me was that this Managua was never rebuilt. Part of it still stands, most strikingly a beautiful, empty, ruined Cathedral in the old and empty part of town. But instead of rebuilding the city from the center out, Managua rebuilt itself in neighborhoods, groupings of homes or businesses clustered village style around a steep rise in the middle of the sprawl.

I had no idea about any of this, because the reality is I knew very little about Nicaragua. That's part of the reason I chose it for my second Habitat trip. My first Habitat trip was to Malawi, Africa, a country I knew even less about. And that nation now lies so deeply embedded in my heart that it's hard to believe I could have so easily lived my whole life without it. I felt like I discovered a secret, a little gem that most of the world rushed past. Nicaragua is nowhere near as remote or as quiet a corner as Malawi, but it still intrigued me precisely because of my ignorance.

There's something terrifying and thrilling about flying off to a country that doesn't really exist in your head. Even if we haven't been to a place like Rome or Athens, those cities exist in everyone's conscious. We all have an idea of what they are like, images and feelings, whether that idea is accurate or not.

Nicaragua didn't really exist for me, not except for a few fragmented pieces from history classes and cursory Google and Wikipedia searches. It was uncharted territory until the moment our plane touched down.

Due to a last minute change of plans, our Habitat build took place in Managua. Originally we were supposed to build in a little community close to the Pacific Ocean. However the need changed, and so our build location changed. On our first day after we landed, we had some extra time so we drove the hour to the ocean to swim or dip our toes in (surprisingly enough this was the first time I touched the Pacific Ocean, I've flown over it, swam in seas and gulfs fed by it, but I had never actually stood beside it until that moment our first day in Nicaragua).

While we were at the ocean, we saw the hotel we would have stayed in, an adorable little beach resort complete with a pool, full bar, and only a handful of feet from the sand. And of course, there was that moment of "really?" as we loaded back up to drive back to our actual hotel in Managua. We could have had a week of sand and surf. I could have been sipping margaritas in the pool for 7 days.

But now that the week is done, I am so happy that our plans changed and we stayed in Managua the entire week. Because I got to know a city that I don't think many tourists ever do. Managua is like a lot of Central American capitals, a place you fly into and then get the hell out of on your way to an island or beach or rainforest. Like I said before, there's no center except for a creepily empty square surrounded by damaged buildings.

The old center of Managua, completely vacant and never rebuilt after the '72 earthquake

The only other capital city I've spent time in in this part of the world was Port au Prince in Haiti. I had that city (which hurt on a visceral level to spend time in) in my mind along with some guidebook warnings about Managua as well as what some people who had been to Nicaragua already had told me. I didn't have much in the way of optimism about what the city would be, and I was fine with that because I wasn't there as a tourist. I was there to serve and build houses.

I was ready for Managua to be sad or hectic or over crowded. I was ready for begging at every street corner and dirt. But the thing about Managua is that, at least in the parts of the city we saw, it didn't seem to get the memo about its less then sterling reputation. The traffic is a little insane (but nowhere near the levels of some cities I've visited). There's a good amount of trash on the sides of roads. There are a lot of houses that look inadequate. There's not much in the way of grand boulevards or quaint historic districts.

But for a city that literally crumbled 40 years ago, Managua felt surprisingly solid to me. And safe. It felt like a place people lived and worked, like a place where families raised children, and people went to school. Sometimes when you travel you go to these places that feel almost like Disney World. Everyone and everything there seems to exist to serve tourism. Everything is in English. You can't cross a street without seeing a hotel or internet cafe. Everything seems a little too shiny and rehearsed.

Managua felt like a real place. It's not a city that stuns you or overwhelms you (either with beauty or sadness). It feels like a city that simply is itself, take it or leave it. And I love it for that.

We stayed at the Hotel Colonnade, a cute little hotel tucked away on a quiet road near the main financial district. The hotel was small but clean and nice with lovely and helpful staff. The rooms were spacious and air conditioned and led out onto a cute central courtyard with a handful of tables and chairs and a little pool. It may not have had sea views, but from my second floor room you did catch a little glimpse of Lake Managua and the volcanic hills around it.

Not taken from the hotel, but same view, only a little farther away

The hotel was perfect for our group, because we were practically the only guests there except for a few random tourists who spent some nights there. We spent every evening and night hanging out in the courtyard, enjoying a Victoria cerveza or two (or three) and talking.

Besides the build (which will have its on post), we ventured out a lot more than I expected. On our Malawi trip we mostly stayed at the hotel, because there wasn't really anywhere else to go. In Managua we had several outings, aided by our wonderful driver, Nelson, who was ready with his van 24/7. There was a little Mexican/Nicaraguan restaurant two doors down that had the best corn tortillas and chorizo sausage I have ever tasted. We took a tour of the city on Sunday and stopped at a baseball game (apparently baseball is HUGE in Nicaragua, even more popular than soccer).

We were there for the first game of a double header, and while the crowd was small, they more than made up for it with noise. A lot of the people there had those noise makers, vuvuzelas (remember at the World Cup when they had to ban them because they were just that annoying?) and they used them when their team (the Boers) did something good, when the other team did something bad, hell when literally anything happened. There were drummers who sat about two rows behind us. There were touts who walked around selling the Nicaraguan version of baseball food. No hot dogs or nachos, but instead giant pork rinds with slaw on top, ice cones topped with thick, syrupy liquid, and lots of other delicious and weird looking snacks that we were warned not to eat. A television reporter interviewed Mary Catherine about what we were doing in Nicaragua on camera, and so somewhere in the vaults of Nicaragua television is footage of me sitting next to her, grinning like an idiot, with a wall of noise behind me. My favorite part of the game was an older man behind us who was dressed head to toe in baseball getup. He shouted the entire time, more than likely crude and shocking obscenities aimed at the other team. But my Spanish comprehension doesn't go that far, so it was delightful. The home team won after a late in the game rally so go Boers!

After the game we toured more of the city, including the old Managua I mentioned before. The old Cathedral is gorgeous even in ruin.

Our Habitat coordinator Salem (more on him later), was the perfect guide, filling us in on Nicaragua's crazy, tumultuous political history as well as its geographical history. Apparently it's not all that strange that Managua was destroyed by an earthquake in the 70s, because Nicaragua is not just one of the most seismically active places on earth, but one of the most disaster prone in general (seriously name a natural disaster and it has happened in the past, earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, VOLCANO eruption). His advice to us in case of an earthquake (apparently little ones happen here almost constantly) was to not panic. My plan for almost any natural disaster is to do exactly that, and panic my head off, because it is one of the few occasions in life where panic is warranted and you might as well run around in circles screaming right?

We went to the very top of the city, where you can see the clusters of neighborhoods that make up Managua as well as the lake and mountains surrounding it. On the top of the hill is also a giant statue figure of Sandino, a Nicaraguan revolutionary hero famous for resisting the bad guys, aka US military occupation (awkward right?). His name also was the inspiration for the Sandinista group, who led a revolution in the late 70s and are the current political party in power.

His silhouette is all over the city, along with lots and lots of political posters of the current President Daniel Ortega (apparently his current presidency is unconstitutional because it is his second consecutive term and third term total, which the constitution says is not okay, ummm, so minor problem that a country's president is actively and openly breaking the constitution right?)

Aside from touring, we also got out a few times for little jaunts during the week. There was a McDonald's a few blocks away from our hotel on the main road, and let's just say a few of us got a little obsessed with the idea, enough to convince Salem to let us walk there( walking anywhere at night in Managua being the one thing Habitat generally tried to avoid us doing). The good news, I, nor any of my companions, did not die in pursuit of a McFlurry. We were propositioned by "ladies of the night" and nearly run over by buses, but we made it there (and probably gave Salem a minor heart attack). And that McFlurry was so worth the risk of bodily harm. In Nicaragua, they put caramel in their McFlurries. McDonald's of the US, get on this.

We went to a local market in the middle of the week, which was the less expensive, less touristy version of the craft market we had planned for our weekend R&R. This market reminded me a little of some Asian markets I've been to, in the sense that you could find almost anything there, no matter how crazy or random it is. There were new shoes, colorful hammocks (one of Nicaragua's famous products), pinatas, pinata candy, electronics, clothes, a vast section of produce and meat (including eyeballs! just eyeballs hanging out on a table, no idea what animal they belonged to nor do I want to know), pottery, jewelry, kitchen goods. We left there with like 10 hammocks between us (I did not get one sadly, because the only place I have for it right now is my bedroom, and I don't need another temptation for napping in my room).

There were also a few restaurant outings and grocery store runs. It was nice to be able to get out into the city a little, because my last Habitat trip didn't really allow for that. The restaurants were almost across the board great (except for one slightly disastrous night where half of us (who wanted to share) ordered a boatload of food, half of us (the non-sharers) didn't get their food until our side of the table was literally sagging under the weight of all the plates, a few of us ate chicken that turned out to be raw inside, and one of us got locked in the bathroom for 10 minutes while the confused, non-English Nicaraguan staff tried and failed to get the door open). Shockingly I was not the one who got locked in the bathroom, even though normally that would be me 9 times out of 10.

Other than that things in Managua went smoothly. Maybe it was naiveté or the fact that I wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone without being followed by our anxious and protective coordinator, but I felt safe in Managua. I also didn't feel like a space alien, which is how I've felt in some other non-touristy towns or cities I've been to. People were friendly and helpful but they weren't all that fascinated by us. They spoke to us in Spanish, because we were in a Spanish speaking country. They handed us Spanish menus. They passed us without much notice on their way to work or school.

If you are a tourist, it's true there is not a lot in Managua to keep you. And if I had gone to Nicaragua as a tourist, without a group and without the support of an organization like Habitat, I'm not sure I would have lingered there either. I think that's one of the things I love so much about Habitat, is that it allows you to travel to a place that is, to use such an overused phrase, "off the beaten path." Managua is not going to show up in travel magazines. It's not going to attract the jet setters and the fabulous.

And maybe that's one of the things I loved most about it. It didn't feel like somewhere you visit. It felt like somewhere you live, an imperfect, flawed city, with its share of problems, but with the calm and nonchalance that maybe comes from being passed over or dismissed by the outside world. To put it crudely, I don't think Managua really gives a shit about what the outside world thinks of it. Can you blame it? It's been leveled by an earthquake, shaken by hurricanes, threatened by volcanoes, and gripped by decades of political violence and unrest.

There must be a kind of weary honesty that comes after all that, a lack of concern about vanity and the surface of things.

I've been to a lot of beautiful places where I've wondered where everyone lives, the people who own the restaurants or serve the drinks or man the front desk. That authentic, lived-in world is so separate that you can't even see it. And that hurts those places, because even though they are so gorgeous and lovely, there's an emptiness that you can't really shake. Managua isn't like that. I feel like I saw the people there. It's may not be the most beautiful city on earth or the most glamorous, but it doesn't feel like it's missing something. It feels whole.

And so that is the setting for my week, Managua, the kind of city people don't usually stop in, the kind of place I'm so happy that we did.

Some things.

2013-05-08T14:53:00.001-04:00

Oh blog of mine. I have neglected you it is true. In my defense this past semester kicked my ass left, right, up, down, and every which way in between. I had my last exam on Monday and immediately went to Extras in Carytown with most of my class for celebratory drinks. And they were celebratory. But they also felt weary. Sure we tried to dress as cute as possible (and this is no easy feat after a week of finals), but we had the fatigued, slumped over look of battered soldiers.

The important thing is we're done. I have officially one semester left of nursing school, at the end of which I will (all fingers crossed and wood knocked on) become an RN. This whole process has been so mind, body, and soul exhausting that I think sometimes I've forgotten there's an end point. All the sudden you look up and realize, wow, there's a period to the end of this run-on, rambling sentence. I will have a career and a profession and a salary. All of these finals and clinicals and projects and papers and concept maps and reflections are leading somewhere. And it's getting so tantalizingly close.

But for now there's summer. Beautiful, sweet summer. And I am going to hopefully be a much more frequent poster. For now here are some things that make me very happy and excited about the next few months.

1. On Saturday I go to Nicaragua! I'm going with Habitat Global Village, and I am so ready to be back in my dirty, sweaty, unkempt travel mode. I've unpacked all my travel/work pants (these are never worn between trips, because really, how often do you need convertible, mesh paneled, sun/bug protectant, ultra moisture wicking, 12 zippered pants in daily life? I'm going to stock up on wet wipes, Cliff bars, hand sanitizer, and tiny toiletries (my mission type travel staples). I have my malaria pills and just in case antibiotics ready to go. And the best part of all, I'm going with my best friend Mary Catherine. We have been best friends since we were 6 and haven't traveled together (other than the local girls weekend kind of trips) in years and years. I've done these types of trips solo and that can be special in its own way. But I am so thrilled and happy to share this upcoming experience with my friend. Definitely a blog recap and lots of pictures will follow.

2. Speaking of my best friend, Mary Catherine, she and her husband just moved back to Richmond from PA. And yeah I may or may not be insanely giddy over this. I am very selfish and like all of my best friends in the same city. There are still several who have not complied with this, but my evil plan is to lure them back one by one.

3. I went to the outlets yesterday. I have not really shopped all semester because I've been too busy and more importantly broke. I wrote a boat load of Richmond.com articles last month though and my pay check finally came in yesterday. And damage may have been done. All I know is that there are a lot of really cute summer items in my closet today (shorts and skirts and dresses oh my!). And it makes me happy.

4. In June I'll start a nurse externship (don't ask me why they don't call it an internship, I don't know) at St. Mary's on a med/surg/hospice unit. I will be shadowing a nurse full time for 8 weeks and I think it's going to be scary, hard, and an incredible learning experience. I am nervous but mostly really looking forward to "working" as an RN full-time for 8 weeks. I'll get used to 12 hours shifts and possibly night and weekend shifts (I work whatever schedule the nurse weeks), and I think that will be a really nice way to ease into my future life ahead of time.

5. I'm going to see The Shins in Norfolk with the boyfriend in a couple of weeks. They've been one of my favorite bands for years and I think it's going to be incredible to see them live. I know it's the biggest cliche in the world, but New Slang is one of those songs that I think will just shatter my heart to hear live in the best possible way.

6. I'm playing in a kickball league with most of the same people I played dogeball with earlier this year. If my skills at dogeball are any indication, my kickball playing will be a sight to behold. People will likely stop, open-mouthed, and stare in wonder. I will become legend by the end of the season.

7. In general I am just very excited for a Richmond summer, for food truck foods courts, the Greek festival, warm nights at Fan restaurant patios, outdoor concerts, running in the heat and sweating my butt off, boat trips on the James, walks at Maymont. I love my city in the summer and for the next three months I can enjoy it without any of the stress of school.

And I've broken this promise before, but there will be many more blog posts this summer than there have been this spring. Pinkie swear :)

Boston.

2013-04-17T17:10:00.004-04:00

I've wanted to write about the Boston marathon, have started a couple of times, but could never put anything down that sounded remotely descriptive of what I feel.

It's just the shittiest. And that's about as eloquent as I can get right now. Luckily while I was online today I found a writer who said what I wanted and needed to say, only far more eloquently and without the cursing.

From Jonathan Beverly on RunnersWorld.com:

One of the cruel twists of April 15, 2013, is that many of the victims of the Boston bombings were spectators and supporters of runners. Anyone who has run a marathon knows that these are among the world’s most unselfish people that day: wives and husbands, mothers and sons, sisters and friends who give up their weekend, fight crowds and endure weather to stand for hours to glimpse their loved one passing by, to cheer and help celebrate someone else’s accomplishment. I cannot imagine the emotions of fearing that someone who came to support me might have given their life. Faced with tragedy, I’m reminded that our time is limited, and we give our lives by how we spend the hours while our hearts still beat.

I read this, and it hit the nail exactly on the head for why I've felt so devastated by what happened. Anyone would be devastated. It's a horrific event no matter your perspective.

But he's so right. These people who were hurt or killed. They were doing something so kind and good and supportive. I keep thinking of the people cheering for me at the end of my marathon. There were the people who knew me, who I loved, who I cannot even fathom something like this happening to. But there were also strangers, people who didn't know me at all.

And they still cheered. The last half mile of the marathon was such a blur. I was so exhausted. But from all around me I heard a chorus of "Go Liz!" or "You're almost there Liz." I kept looking to see if it was people I knew. But for the most part it wasn't. They were strangers. When I was on empty, when my legs were gone, when I could barely put one foot in front of the other, these people carried me.

They were doing the same thing in Boston. And then something like this happened. And it's just the shittiest.

I do take comfort in one thing. It's such a cliche at this point because people keep saying it, but it's also true and good and one of the only things about this whole situation that is beautiful. You watch the video of the bombs, and so many people, police and security yes, but also just regular people, men and women, many of whom who had just ran 26.2 miles, they ran toward the explosions. They could have been propelled by animal instinct, by gut self preservation to run the opposite direction. No one would have blamed them.

But they ran toward the explosions. They ran to help. They ran motivated by that nugget of humanity that motivates unfathomable heroism but also motivates strangers to stand by a race route and cheer for the nutjobs who run a marathon, to support the insane in their ridiculous pursuit.

I am so awed by the fierce strength of that humanity. And I think of that when the world threatens to fall apart, when something as good and positive as a marathon turns into bloodshed and terror.

I think of the people who ran to help.

And then I do what I do, and have done for several years now, when my heart needs some grace.

I lace up my tennis shoes and I run until the world stops spinning.

On birthing fake, plastic babies.

2013-03-19T19:52:00.001-04:00

There are moments in nursing school that are stressful, funny, chaotic, infuriating, wonderful, and sad.

And then there are moments that are straight up ridiculous. I'd say 99% of those moments involve our school's "high fidelity mannequins." They are plastic dummies, but we're supposed to call them "high fidelity mannequins" so as not to hurt their fake, plastic feelings. Seriously these things are literally worth their weight, and then some. Like tens of thousands of dollars worth of robot. If there were a horrible fire at school, and the administration had to choose who the firemen would save between the mannequins and the students...

well let's just say the mannequins have better insurance policies.

We have these simulations with the high fidelity mannequins, and have had them from the beginning, when it was just baths and changing sheets. We've taken the mannequins' vitals (and they have vitals, heart sounds, pulses, and respirations, because (dramatic pause), THEY'RE ALIVE!). We've given them meds, blood transfusions, IVs. Two semesters ago we lost a mannequin. He flatlined in a tragic code, despite our heroic rescue attempts. I haven't mentioned it on this blog, because I'm still grieving. I'll never forget the look in his shiny doll eyes.

Taking a moment to collect myself. Moving on.

This semester things have gotten even more fun. Because guess what? Mannequins come in all kinds of varieties, like child size! And pregnant!

There is nothing quite as soul destroying as having to practice nursing care on a glorified doll (if my school knew I called it a "doll" right then I think they would expel me on the spot). Not only do we get videotaped and then have to watch it back, but the simulation objectives always, always, include "practice loving kindness."

Pause for a moment.

I am 27 years old and I get graded on practicing loving kindness to a giant Ken doll.

To be fair I've gotten used to it. I'm a little better at keeping a straight face when my mannequin says things like (oh yes, it TALKS, and cries, and bleeds and poops and sweats and wheezes, there is no limit to what these things can and cannot do) "I don't feel well."

Today was a first though. Today's simulation ended with the arrival of new mannequin life into the world. Of course we didn't know in advance. We never do. The teachers like to keep the simulation mysterious and secretive, like we're going in to elect a pope.

We got in the room today to get "report", on a homeless, drug addicted teenage pregnant girl and within minutes our patient was crowning. Just picture this beautiful, nugget of a moment.

With one arm I'm holding the mannequin's leg as far up as it would go toward the ceiling (I think she can technically sue me for sexual assault now), with my other hand (warning this is about to get as graphic as any conversation about plastic will get), I am sticking my fingers into her hoo haw to keep the umbilical cord away from the baby's head. I am also alternately shouting "breathe!" and "push!" and "you can do it!". The mannequin is shouting back at me "don't touch me!" and "mommmy!"(our teachers control what they say from a little man behind the curtain set up in the room). My classmate across from me is doing the same thing with the other leg. Another classmate is gowned and gloved at the foot of the bed, delivering the plastic baby that is rapidly coming out of our mannequins lady bits, because our "doctor" is stuck in traffic.

That is literally something that happened to me.

And it is about only the 50th weirdest thing that has happened to me in nursing school.

Also, it is my worst fear to be alone at my school at night. Because you just know it is a horror movie WAITING to happen with all of those talking, coding, baby birthing mannequins all over the place.

Charleston was.

2013-03-16T11:50:00.000-04:00

Had an absolutely wonderful time in Charleston, as I always do. And as always, it was really, really hard to leave (like checking out Zillow for a $500 shack I might be able to buy and live in there hard). Some highlights:

-Morning runs. I could just kick my past self for not being a runner when I lived in Charleston. Because it is such an amazing city to run in. I look forward to waking up early and running. When I'm on vacation. Seriously. Because this is what I see on those early morning runs, when the tourists aren't out in full force yet, and the streets are quiet and soft, and the air is cool but the sun is warm.

This

And this.

-Food. Oh so much delicious food. From an oyster slider (sweet home-baked roll, the most flavorful fried oyster, this out of control Asian sauce) that almost made me pass out at The Ordinary to some of the best chicken I've ever eaten in my life at Stars (that wood-fire oven is magical). From banana/peanut butter muffins at Baked to more oysters and beer at Pearlz. From morning coffee at City Lights to fried pickles and sparkling rose at the Bar at Husk, to finally, the main event, after so main failed attempts to get reservations, dinner at Husk, Sean Brock's restaurant that Bon Appetit called the best new restaurant in America when it opened in 2011. We had insanely good mussels and fried chicken skin for an appetizer, a skillet of cornbread for the table (I am highly skeptical of restaurant cornbread, because homemade is usually far superior, but holy wow, there must be a bunch of Southern grandmas in the Husk kitchen, because this was ridiculously good), and then I had trout and Carolina gold rice for my main, nothing crazy, nothing weird, just Southern food the way Southern food really is to anyone who knows it, all about great, traditional, local ingredients, from seafood to vegetables to rice, served to taste fricking amazing. I am positive I gained at least 5 pounds in Charleston. But it was so totally worth it.

-Kayaking at Middleton Place. I only went to Middleton Place once when I lived in Charleston, at night for a Spoleto concert, and I definitely never kayaked the Ashley near Middleton. But I'm so glad we did this weekend, because it was such a great way to experience my beautiful Lowcountry. Tidal marshes are always what get to me most about Charleston, more than that ocean or those rivers or the harbor. Maybe it's just me, but there's something rawly soulful about a tidal marsh, the way it ebbs and flows, rises and falls, carries things from the ocean and carries things (and manatees! although only in the summer darn it) back to it. Tidal marshes are unpretentious and quiet next to those big bodies of water all around Charleston, but they are without question its life blood. And they infuse the whole area, even inland, with that hint of salt, with that promise of wide, blue sea.

We had an awesome guide, one of those people who grew up in Charleston that I am so jealous of because they literally exude outdoorsy sedation. We paddled up river against a current so it was a great upper body workout, but still so relaxing and peaceful. We didn't spot any gators or dolphins (although we saw plenty of wild gators later walking around the grounds of Middleton, and plenty of dolphins playing in the harbor), but I could have cared less. I was surrounded by marsh and marsh grass and got to listen to a guide talk about Charleston area history (there is nothing I dorkily love more). It was heaven in a kayak.

We walked around the grounds of Middleton (or a tiny fraction of them, according to our guide it's still an 8,000 acre plantation, and that's a substantial reduction from what it once was), and I cannot think of a more beautiful place in this world. Yes, before you yell at me, I know Middleton was once the sight of slavery, and that's awful and horrible, and it should be remembered and not just glossed over because things are pretty. But being somewhere like Middleton, with such crazy physical beauty, you also are just fully in the present, appreciating the place for what it is now, not what it once was.

Spring is beginning to spring in Charleston, and the first hints of flowers were popping up around the grounds. Although even without the flowers, even in the middle of winter, this place would be stunning. Just because of the fact that the grounds are covered with some of the biggest, most ancient looking, out of control gorgeous live oaks I've ever seen. Even after all these years, live oaks and spanish moss make me weak in the knees.

Plus, gators! The big pond there was PACKED with these. Would have been more scared but our trusty guide told us there are about two gators attacks per decade in the Lowcountry. So I figured my chances were pretty good.

-South Carolina Aquarium. I am such a nerd for this aquarium. I think I took nearly everyone who visited me in Charleston to it. It's not the biggest aquarium in the world. It doesn't have the fanciest selection of water creatures. But I absolutely love it, because it does such an incredible job of being about local South Carolina animals and conservation. It was built on the harbor and even the building feels like an extension of the natural world around it. There is so much love and passion in the air there for these local animals, and I every time I go, I come away wanting to do everything in my part to protect sea turtles and fish. Which is kind of the whole point of aquariums, yes?

Since the last time I went they got an albino alligator. And I swear to God I had to stifle a scream when I turned the corner and saw this.

I am torn between being 99% positive that this is Satan incarnate, come to destroy the world, and feeling kind of bad for the guy, because apparently albino alligators usually don't live into adulthood in the wild because they don't have the usual gator camouflage. Which is pretty sad. Also alligators have to lie in the sun to get warm, and albino alligators get sun-burnt. Which is also pretty sad. So 1% of me feels sorry for him. The rest of me wanted to get a vial of holy water and start an exorcism.

On a much less demonic note, we took a tour of the sea-turtle hospital, which I've always wanted to do, because what is more adorable than a sea turtle hospital.

They were at capacity, because apparently there was a huge incidence of "cold shock" this year in more northern harbors (sea turtles swim up north somewhere like Boston harbor, the water gets really cold really fast, the sea turtles get hypothermia and really sick). The Boston Aquarium was full, so a lot of these turtles were flown down in private planes by very generous millionaires (take a moment to say aw). There were also turtles there who had been run over by boats (sad face), or gotten hurt by fishing lines or hooks (dear fishermen, according to the aquarium, if a sea turtle swallows your hook, do NOT try to get the hook out, cut the line and alert the proper authorities). There was even a turtle with a bowel obstruction who had really bad gas that made it hard for him to stay under-water.

(that's why they have weights on his shell, poor guy)

It is incredible the lengths this place goes to to save these turtles. They do surgery, start IVs, give medicine. The turtle with the bowel obstructions even got enemas (although to be fair, that's probably a much easier and nicer job than a human enema). They'll sometimes have these turtles in for years, but the ultimate goal is always to release them. They had all these pictures on the walls of the releases, of all these humans on a beach there to celebrate a sea turtle going back to the ocean. And the whole time I was there I couldn't help thinking how beautifully dumb humans can be. And I mean that in the best possible way. What other species would give up so much time and energy and resources (private planes people) to help another species? It's so immensely compassionate and lovely. It shows this vast wealth of decency and selflessness. There's hope for us yet right? If we're willing to do this:

I can't help but think that overall we're good eggs. We just need to work a little harder to be so heroic towards each others.

(Also, another public service announcement brought to you by the sea turtle aquarium guide, if you go to a beach where sea turtles hatch, at the end of the day level the sand (if you made a sand castle or buried someone), because baby sea turtles have to walk across the beach and if they fall in a hole or run into a sand castle they might get stuck and not make it to the ocean, which makes me want to cry, so I will never again leave a sand castle on a beach and I hope you won't either, also never leave a plastic bag on a beach, sea turtles think they're delicious jellyfish!)

But really that's why I love the SC Aquarium. I leave there wanting to save the ocean and rivers and ponds and all of their inhabitants.

There were of course so many other highlights, long, lovely strolls around the city, doughnuts from Glazed (oh if that had been there in college, actually thank GOD it wasn't), rooftop bars with heat lamps, some good live music at an otherwise quiet bar on a Monday night. The whole trip was one big highlight.

It was Charleston. How could it be anything less?

Oh my sweet Carolina.

2013-03-08T11:00:00.002-05:00

I am officially on spring break and tomorrow Rob and I are heading to my favorite place in the world, my sweet Charleston.

I have talked at length on this blog about how much Charleston means to me, and I still don't think I've ever adequately put it into words. This city was my physical home for four and a half years. And it's still my home. That hasn't changed or shifted or softened with the years I've now spent away. I think about Charleston nearly every day. And it always fills me with quiet and peace, with grace and stillness. It's my heart, and tomorrow I will be there, and that makes me so, so happy.

I have such a long list of things for us to do in the three days we'll be there, including:

-Going for a run around the city and along the battery. When I was in Charleston in January my knee still wouldn't let me run without pain, and I am hoping that I get a pain free, lengthy run of the peninsula. I wasn't a runner in college and that fills me with regret. Because Charleston is a city designed for running, completely flat with a constant breeze in the fresh, salt tinged air.

(see! Runner's World agrees with me that Charleston is the best running city ever. This was in their latest issue as a Rave Run)

-Drinks and dinner Saturday night on Upper King (which has grown even more hip and trendy and revitalized since when I was a student and all there was up there was O'Malley's and Silver Dollar)

-Drinks and oysters at The Ordinary, the new raw bar from the guys who run FIG which was the site of one of the greatest meals of my life

-We have reservations for dinner at Stars, a grill room and rooftop bar with what sounds like an awesome delicious wood fire grill

-Sunday we're going to go see Middleton Plantation and (!) kayak the Ashley river from the plantation as a starting point (the description said we could spot gators, dolphins, and, wait for it, manatees!)

MANATEES!

-Hoping to have a casual night Sunday, maybe get a big, juicy burger out on Sullivan's at Poe's Tavern or hit up Shem Creek (the site of so many drunken college nights)

-Will definitely get in a Sullivan's walk (or if it's really as warm as it sounds like, sunbathing session)

-Hoping to get in a stop at the Aquarium, right on the harbor and one of my all time favorite Charleston places (plus sea turtles!)

-For our last night we're going to Husk, Sean Brock's second restaurant, which I've been dying to try since it opened (even a few weeks ago every other night we were going to be there was booked solid)

And I plan on spending the rest of the time soaking up as much of Charleston as possible, taking the kind of deep, full breaths that I only really take in that city.

I have been a good number of places in this world, to a lot of far flung cities and islands, to places of incredible beauty.

But nowhere, and I mean nowhere, compares to my Charleston. Give me spanish moss and tidal marshes, coastal creeks and soft, blue ocean. I'll take live oaks and salt air and side porches; tides and shrimp boats and Confederate jasmine. I'll take them, and Charleston, over anything on this big, wide earth.

Snow day.

2013-03-06T10:10:00.001-05:00

Today I was supposed to go teach middle schoolers with learning/language disabilities about the fun filled topics of nutrition and sleep (oh the things nursing school loves to make us do).

Instead I woke up to find out that their school is cancelled, our school is cancelled, and pretty much the entire city of Richmond is cancelled.

I have an exam tomorrow so sadly I can't participate in my normal snow day mainstay (mimosas at Joe's!). But in my dorky way, I'm still happy for a cozy day of studying pediatric congenital heart defects, skin conditions, musculoskeletal disorders, and communicable diseases (fun right?), with the snow storm outside.

It will be a day filled with this

And this

And of course, this :)

Burning Love.

2013-03-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across the first season of this Bachelor/Bachelorette inspired/mocking show on E! a few nights ago, and was momentarily confused and then immediately obsessed.

The first season isn't online, but the second season is (which is a take off of the Bachelorette). I feel like I would appreciate these even more if I watched the source material, but seriously they are some of the funniest things I've ever watched. I gorged on all seven episodes (they're only like 12 minutes long) last night like they were candy. If you watched the great Party Down you'll be delighted to see a lot of the cast on here. The actor who played Ron Donald is the creator (Soup R' Crackers forever!) But there's also so many amazing random and great people (Michael Cera, Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Jerry O'Connell and the list goes on and on).

I really can't do it justice, so just take my word and watch it. Like I said the episodes are really short, but you might want to block out at least an hour or two, because once you watch one you'll want to watch all of them.

Saturday o' wine.

2013-03-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

Saturday combined three of my favorite things: day-drinking, beautiful Charlottesville scenery, and WINE. Wine gets the all caps treatment, because come on, what is there not to like about wine. It makes everything better. And okay fine I may have woken up today with somewhat of a raging headache, but you know what, totally worth it.

My present to Rob for Valentine's Day this year was a 5 hour wine tour, which I booked through Wish Wish (sort of like a Groupon/Living Social hybrid). The tour basically meant we had a driver pick us up, take us around to wineries for 5 hours, then drop us off tipsy and happy at the end, which is a crucial ingredient for a successful day of wine drinking.

The picture above is from our first stop, Barboursville. Their tasting was definitely the most extensive of the day, and the people who worked there seemed really knowledgable. I nodded and murmured agreement as they went on about oakiness and soft finishes and touches of boisonberry or whatever. But my internal monologue went more along the lines of one consistent "yummy."

After Barboursville we went to Keswick. A really cute and cozy little tasting room and the guy who poured for us was awesome, really friendly and helpful.

From Keswick we went to Blenheim (also known as Mr. Dave Matthews' vineyard).

The tasting was pretty short with only four wines, but the atmosphere here was my favorite of the day. Beautiful view. Cozy, non-pretentious tasting room with a younger vibe than some of the other places. The tasting room was on the second floor of the building, and you could look down into the barrel room on the first floor.

Also they had pita chips, hummus, and Italian salami! Which when you're a little buzzed after three wine tastings and two glasses of wine, really hits the spot.

From Bleheim we went to Trump. And yes I realize how incongruous that name sounds amidst a day of classy, Charlottesville wine tasting. But it was right next to Blenheim and we were curious. It was hard to get past my aversion to all things Trumpy, but really, except for giant gold Ts on everything, the former Klugy winery, was very restrained. I liked it because it was the only tasting with sparkling wine. And by then, let's be honest, you could have poured me Arbor Mist and I probably would have thought it was the height of sophistication.

I've been to wineries in Charlottesville before, but this was the first time I did multiple ones in one day, and it was definitely worth the eventual headache. It was freezing and cloudy on Saturday, which doesn't scream country outing, but it ended up being really nice. Most of the tasting rooms had fireplaces, and it gave the day a very cozy, warm up away from the cold vibe.

There are a million wineries in Charlottesville and I look forward to hopefully trying them all. Because where there is wine, I will go to there.

ITB Blues.

2013-02-24T15:17:00.003-05:00

So the last running related post I did on here was my marathon recap. Nada since then. Nada, unfortunately being a word that can also be applied to the amount of real running I've done since the marathon, in early November.

I can count on two hands the number of times I've ran. Since early November. Three plus months ago.

I haven't wanted to write about it, because it's just a bummer, and also because I've been slightly in denial. But I feel I can share now, because today, for the first time since the marathon I ran more than a mile without any knee pain. In fact I ran three. And I am super, super hopeful that this means I can finally return to my beloved city streets on a regular basis (that sentence also reads like I could be an on-the-mend prostitute, rest assured, I don't mean those kind of streets).

I did what all runners do with any kind of injury. I googled the shit out of it. Although from my own running history I kind of immediately knew what the likely culprit was:

Back when I was in my wee, early days of running, I trained for the Monument Ave 10k and promptly got injured. My sports med doctor called it a hip strain. And it was, kind of. But it was also, as my physical therapist, could quickly see, the symptom of a larger problem, ITBS, or iliotibial band syndrome. I did PT for several weeks, lots of clam shells, lots of stretches and strengtheners. I got a foam roller and learned about its magic. And it got better.

Nearly two years later however, ITBS reared its ugly head. It's an overuse injury, which means it doesn't start out screaming at you. It starts out quiet. I noticed it during my long training runs a month or so out from the marathon. Pain on the outside of my knee. At the time it was relatively dull and I could run through it. I'd be sore around the area for a couple of days, mostly going up and down stairs. But I could push past it. I had my eyes on a shiny marathon medal and a 26.2 sticker, and pesky knee pain wasn't going to stop me.

Plus there was the whole last minute calf strain thing, which pushed any other aches and pains out of my mind. And then there was the marathon. I'll just quote myself to describe how my knees were doing at around mile 20.

"The walk/run strategy was okay other than the first 30 seconds of starting to run again. Every time I did that I had to brace myself and hold my breath for just excruciating pain as my running muscles started up. Both of my knees felt like they had shards of glass in them and the transition from walking to running made those shards of glass really, really pissed off."

Oh yes. That. A normal person would, I don't know, stop doing an activity if said activity made it feel like there were shards of glass grinding around inside their knee. But this was on marathon day, so clearly I was not in any way a normal person. I put it to the back of my mind. I remember it very distinctly, how my knee felt every time I started to run. I think I knew then, what it was costing me, that I was doing something very bad to my body. But of course I kept going. I had to. Even now, knowing what I know, I wouldn't have stopped. I would have been just as much of an idiot, because when you run a marathon you have to stop being smart and start being stupid. Stupid during a marathon is the language of your heart. Brave, heroic, but incredibly stupid.

I tried to run about a week after the marathon, and honestly I don't remember that run being all that bad. Maybe because my body was such a wreck that there were too many aches and pain to differentiate from, but it wasn't until the next run that I knew something was wrong. I went out for a run, and right around the mile one mark, the side of my right knee started hurting. Within a few minutes it went from dull pain that you can run through to sharp, bold pain that demands stopping. I could even feel a tender to the touch spot on the side of the knee when I went to examine it.

And that is the story of the next handful of runs I attempted. I would wait a week or two, think it was "better", and then try to run. I would get a moment of hope at the beginning of the run when I was pain free, but like clockwork, ten minutes or so in, the knee would start to hurt, really hurt. I would walk/run for a few more minutes, until even that was too much. And then I would end up walking home, defeated. After all of these runs I'd have pain in the knee for the next couple of days whenever I went up and down stairs or if I kept my knee in one position too long.

I increased the time between my runs, hoping that might help. The longest I went was three weeks. Three weeks. Without any running. It broke my heart, but the worst part is that the time didn't seem to help at all in recovery.

Which brings me to the googling portion of this story. And the asking for advice portion. All of which led me to the same conclusion. ITBS. My case was textbook. I read dozens of similar stories from other runners, all of them frustrated by the same thing, but the inability to run. Some scared the crap out of me, with tales of not being able to run for six months to a year. Others gave me false hope by promising that one simple stretch would completely fix the problem.

I knew what I needed, physical therapy. PT has helped me through two running injuries now, and both times the staff at Physical Therapy Solutions have been miracle workers. It's such a holistic approach, with so many different angles, from stretches to strengthening to massage to ultrasound therapy. The only problem is that I'm a student and have crap insurance, and physical therapy would have to come out of my pocket.

But then, in a moment of clarity, I realized that yes, physical therapy, would be ideal. But I've already done the PT thing for ITBS when it was manifesting in my hip. I can't give myself ultrasound treatment or TENS, but I have the tools for almost everything else. I know by now what works, what needs to be done, and so why was I sitting on my butt, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for my knee to get better? Why wasn't I being proactive and doing things to achieve that?

So a couple of weeks ago I started. I have thrown everything including the kitchen sink at it, including:
-daily Advil (trust me, I am a nursing student, and know NSAIDS should only be used for a short term approach)
-strengthening exercises like my old friend, the clamshell

Dramatic reenactment: I do not look this happy when I'm doing it

-I've been using my stick roller massage thingy (that is its technical name). One thing PT taught me is that massage for rehab should not be relaxing and pleasant. It should hurt like hell. I cannot imagine the amount of scar tissue and adhesions that have built up around my IT band since training. And I can feel them when I roll over them, because it does not feel like that when I roll over muscles elsewhere in my body. In this case, pain is a good thing.

-I've been using ice (probably not as much as I should because I forget)

-I've been using homeopathic gel with arnica (yes seriously). A lovely friend from nursing school gave me some Traumeel before the marathon when I had my calf strain, and I swear that stuff made a difference. So I thought, why not try it again? It's all-natural and it's not harmful. I may not be a homeopathic buff or even really believe in it for a lot of things, but for inflammation and sports injuries it makes sense to use plant based remedies that people have been using in that fashion for centuries. Plus when I apply it I have to massage those muscles again, which is also good.

-Finally and last but not least, I have been stretching like crazy. My eye doctor of all people, recommended a stretch using a counter top. You can see a demo of it in this very low budget Youtube video

I really like stretches that make you suffer a little, because then it feels like you're actually challenging your muscles. This one is killer. I can feel it all the way from my butt to my knee. I know some people say that the ITB cannot be stretched because it's mostly fascia, and okay, fine, that sounds scientific and true. But whatever this stretch stretches, I feel it right along where my IT band runs.

And that's the whole kaboodle. I was literally at the point where I would try anything, so I tried almost everything.

I cannot say if one of those things worked. If so I could never say which one. Maybe it was the combination. Maybe it was none of them and my IT band just randomly decided to stop being a jerk. For whatever reason, something changed, because today I ran three miles with zero knee pain. Not a twinge. And it makes me so happy, because God I've missed it. It was sunny and beautiful out today, and I can't tell you how much I've needed. The gym five days a week is bleak. I never realized how much I needed running not just for the mental and physical exercises, but for the very basic fact that it gets me outside, where there is sunshine and not just fluorescent school or hospital lighting.

I don't want to get too excited, because I know this injury may very well not be over. ITBS isn't like a strain that just heals. It tends to stick around and rear up at inopportune times. I'm not going to over do it and jump back into running too fast. My post marathon idea of running a spring half marathon is pretty much out the window.

But I am cautiously optimistic. And I am humbled. I knew going into the marathon that it wouldn't be free. 26.2 miles can't possibly be. I was prepared for a cost, but I didn't know it was going to be three months without running, three months without gorgeous Sunday afternoons, without my city streets racing past, without fresh air in my lungs. I paid dearly for the marathon. And I just hope that it's done now. That I've paid my dues and I can get back to running.

Because I love it. Because my life isn't the same without it. Because today, running three miles felt like coming home.

3 things for Tuesday night.

2013-02-19T20:16:00.003-05:00

1. One word. Buttermilk.

Okay maybe I need a few more words. One of my favorite foods to make are oven baked chicken nuggets (because they are the closest I can get to my beloved McD's nuggets without sacrificing my health and dignity-although when I am sick and/or hungover, screw my dignity, give me some nuggets and spicy honey mustard). In the past I've stuck to a simple recipe, chop up chicken breasts, dip them in olive oil then Panko bread crumbs, then bake at high temps to get nice and brown.

I stumbled on this recipe from one of my favorite food blogs How Sweet Eats. I didn't make this recipe exactly but I stole a few ideas. #1: soaking the raw chicken in buttermilk for a few hours in the fridge (how could I have never done this before?!) #2 using a wire rack on top of the baking sheet #3 spraying cooking spray on the nuggets and #4 using some whole wheat flour along with my panko.

I neglected to take a picture because I was too busy stuffing the nuggets into my face without stopping to chew/breathe. But, they were awesome. The meat was much more tender and juicy than without the buttermilk and the whole wheat flour gave them a much more traditional nugget crunch than just the bread crumbs. So, so, so good.

2. My Clarisonic Mia has changed my face's life.

I have incredibly weird skin in the sense that on my cheeks and forehead it's pretty nice and smooth. I may have even received random stranger comments on occasion. But, and here's a big but, I have had T zone problems since I was 12. I've managed to keep it more or less under control but only by using an Acne specific 3 step system (Clinique for the last 6 years or so) every morning and night (it takes me like 30 minutes to get ready for bed, there are so many nights when I stay up late just because I am too tired to get ready for bed). I wash my face religiously. I never don't. And only by doing that have I kept relatively pimple free in recent years. But my skin is still oily in my T zone. I have huge pores around my nose. Blackheads (have I over-shared too much yet?). Far too many stress induced breakouts since going back to school.

But then. The skies parted. The sun came out. I finally ponied up the dough to buy a Clarisonic brush. I've had it for almost two weeks, and I can already not imagine life without it. I know that sounds silly. But if you have problem skin try one of these out. I know they are a little pricey. But I can guarantee it's worth it. My skin looks different already, but the biggest change is what it feels like, so smooth, and everywhere on my face now, not just my cheeks. I wash my face and all I want to do after is touch my face (which I know is not the best way to keep it all nice and clean so I resist the urge). I swear my pores have shrunken.

I'm sure I will still get the occasional stress breakout. But I really do feel like this has drastically changed my skin. And no I am not getting paid by Clarisonic. But I just had to share, because I'm sure there are many out there like me, adults who are sick and tired of that monthly break out and not wanting to not feel like Kelly Kapowski in that one episode of Saved by the Bell where Zac sells her defective acne cream to treat her giant, Rudolph nose pimple.

3) Last dodgeball game tonight.

Also, on a related note I'm playing on a social dodgeball league! I'm finally fulfilling my mom's wishes, who before I started dating my boyfriend made a habit of every few months saying something along the lines of "why don't you join one of those social sports leagues? It's a great way to meet single young people." Much to my boyfriend's relief, I am not playing to meet young singles. I signed up with a bunch of my nursing school buddies as a way to force ourself to still have moments of fun in our lives during the semester. And much to my PE hating former self (I literally hid in the bathroom, that or faked a headache, or if I really wanted to get out of it, lady cramps), I have had a great time dodging balls. And that is pretty much all I do. Apparently throwing a dodge ball with enough force to get someone out requires arm strength that I do not, nor ever will, have. I can run 26 miles. I can not throw a ball with even a remote amount of force.

But that's okay. We have lost almost every game (except for two come from-behind, last minute....ties). And it has still been good, silly fun. Especially because our team isn't big fat cheaters like almost every one else who plays.

We may be 4th from last place in the league, but we've left it with our dignity. Plus beer vouches. And t-shirts!