gratitude for the little things

Ran again, and did the faster pace with the longer stride. It works! I mean, I'm not any faster than Monday, but I was able to keep the same pace all the way through - longer strides and I was definitely going at a faster pace than runs previous to Monday. Jason and I have been running our same distances lately, and we basically run half our distance, then turn around and come back the same way. When he was coming back and I passed him much farther along than I normally do, he gave me a big thumbs up, and I just felt like a million bucks. Go, me!

I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole VA Tech mess - it's hard not to with it all over the news. My heart really goes out to Seung-Hui Cho's family - his parents, his sister - whose names are not at the top of people's "please pray for..." lists. I'm guessing that while they are not only mourning the loss of their son/brother, but feeling a great deal of shame, embarrassment, and hurt, too. Cho was a sick, sick guy, and I don't think there was much else that his family could have done. It's a sad reflection on the state of mental illness programs in the US nowadays: insurance companies really don't fund inpatient mental illness stays very well, and are especially stingy when it comes to patients with diagnoses like "antisocial (aka sociopath)" or those who generally act out. If Cho had been schizophrenic, it might be a different story - acting out is seen as just "being bad". Plus, the lack of MH resources meant that Cho's parents were likely ill-equipped to deal with their son's difficulties, were afraid or ashamed to seek help for it, or else just got shuffled around. It's a soapbox I could climb on and stay on all day, but I won't for now. Right now, it's too late, and there are a lot of grieving, hurting people out there, including the Cho family. It makes me feel both grateful and a little ashamed myself that the biggest problem in my life is a reflection of my blessings: the dimpling of my ass, the grades that hover just below A's in the nursing program I am able to attend, the dilemma over which direction to take with my new nursing career that is such a dream come true in itself.

I hope that we can come out of this tragedy with a sense of how much we need to care for our nation's mentally ill and provide more avenues for treatment so that events like Monday's can possibly be prevented. And I hope that our hearts are not hardened to families like Cho's who feel very alone right now, very scared, very ashamed, and still have to grieve the loss of their son/brother.

arriba! andale! andale!

After a Saturday of sloth and a Sunday filled with cold/rain/wind, I laced up the running shoes today and not only ran, but I imagined myself a Boston Marathoner and decided to take my friend Mary's advice to heart: gotta lengthen my stride and not rest on my laurels if I want to build up some speed. So, after a short warm up run, I lengthened that stride, expecting to last maybe 10 minutes doing so. Not so! I made it all the way through my normal run, minus about 1/2 mile. I even did 10-second sprints every 6-7 minutes (or every two songs on my iPod, however long that ended up being). I felt like Speedy Gonzalez. Of course, my legs are feeling it still, but it was really cool, and I found that by consciously focusing on lengthening my stride, I managed to run a 12-12:15 minute mile. Not bad! Once you start at that pace, it's not so difficult to keep it throughout, provided you weren't starting out at, say, 100% effort level.

My sprints were interesting: I knew they were good for my speed - and good for reducing my belly - but you know, I'd never really done them consistently before, and I felt almost uncoordinated as I did them. Like pushing myself that hard made my body wig out and decide to be all forgetful of how to move one foot in front of the other. I had the distinct feeling I was recreating a moment from my favorite show - where Phoebe and Rachel go running and Phoebe decides it's "more fun" to run like a freak on speed instead of Rachel's controlled, conformed sort of jog:



I also thought of my awesome cousin Jen, who inspired me to start running in the first place and who, earlier today, ran the Boston Marathon in what was considered the worst weather conditions in the marathon's history: a nor'easter. Jen, being one of the best storytellers I have ever met, will only use today's crappy weather as fuel for another great tale that will have everyone rolling with laughter - she's great at that. I read that you have to have a qualifying marathon finishing time of 3 hours, 40 minutes (in our age category) to run the Boston Marathon - that's roughly an 8:20-minute mile. Makes my "flying" today seem pretty turtle-paced, but I know every runner starts out somewhere, and especially as I drop these last 30-35 pounds, my flying will fly even faster.

I also thought of my other awesome cousin, Sarah (younger sister of Jen), who is finishing up her freshman year at VA Tech. After the news broke today, I called and found out she was not one of the unfortunate who were injured or killed, but I know she's got to be scared and hurting nonetheless. Listening to the news reports made my blood run cold, so I can only imagine how she's feeling right now. Hang in there, dear cousin. Hang on tight.

kicking ass and taking names

Today's WW weigh-in: down 1 pound for a total of 31.2...

It's exciting to watch those numbers go down, and even better to realize that, in the end, it's good old-fashioned eating and exercise that equals weight loss. Not a fad, not a pill, and certainly not prepackaged foods (I have a hard enough time with Lean Cuisine).

Thursday afternoon when I was running, my friend Mary ran up behind me. She's a triathlon junkie, one of my nursing school classmates, and what I like to hope of as the "fit" me: same height, same general bone structure, except she is all lean and sinewy and could totally kick anyone's ass in the street. And kick my ass is just what she did: after we ran together for about a minute - and I am panting trying to keep up with her "slow" pace" - she announces that the hill up ahead is the one I am going to run with her. Now, realize that I was at the end of my run, it was a bajillion degrees outside, I was tired and verging on total dehydration, and I was pathetically unable to keep up with her at her normal pace. Before getting to the hill, she had me do a 10-second sprint, and I was able to get out of the hill by pleading lateness (I had to go to rehearsal), but man, did I feel like a whiny weakling! It showed me how much I need to challenge myself instead of running in this comfortable sort of rut where I maybe add a 1/2 mile to my distance every month or so, but I don't get any faster.

Kicking my ass was a good thing. If she can run 8 and 9 minute miles, well, SO CAN I. I'm planning on doing some speed work once a week when I run and not just doing what's comfortable all the time... I've even gotten bold and asked for one of these nifty GPS/heart rate monitors to gauge my speed so that I can get faster with my speed work. Wish me luck!

This Old Hip

I spent clinicals today observing in the OR - I watched a man get a new knee and a woman get a new hip. Boy, those surgeries aren't delicate! Three men wearing full body protective gear (think bomb squad apparel) are hammering, chiseling, sawing, using screwdrivers, as well as their full body weights to put the new joints in where the old ones were. It looked like quite a workout, and the surgical supply table looked like something off of a home-improvement show, except instead of building a new house, they were (re)building a new person. Take that, Norm Abram.

Blood!

Imagine what this kid would have done if he saw me running down Cady Way Trail the other afternoon...

"Blood!"

and the verdict is

Total lost this week: -0.8. Not the most dazzling set of numbers I've ever lost for one week, but I'm thrilled because it all adds up for a grand total of:

30.2 pounds GONE. Gone, gone, gone. Never to grace my ass again.

I've reached my goal of thirty pounds gone by my birthday - one month early - and I've actually never weighed this little in my entire adult life. I'll post a picture as soon as I see my husband again (he's out running errands for one of his multiple jobs).

So, now that one challenge is successfully completed, let's make the next one: it's now exactly 4 weeks until my 30th birthday, so my new goal is another 5 pounds in 4 weeks, which will put me at 35.2 pounds gone. It's more of a challenge than the last one, but it's a great motivation, isn't it? 35 by 5/5, here we go...

Incidentally, while I was typing this, PBS was airing a commercial for what looks to be a really interesting program about the fight against obesity and the nearly two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese (staggering numbers, aren't they?). I'm gonna watch it - it's on locally here this Wednesday at 9pm:

FAT: What No One Is Telling You

why I ought to proofread more

Clinicals today: my clinical instructor - who just happens to be a staff RN on the very floor I want to work - came up to me to ask me about the stupid school project I had been working on just a few days ago. One of her regular assignments for us just happened to be the first third of the stupid school project I turned in. It's an incredibly tedious, meticulous, overly-thorough run-down of a patient, from the patient's social history, past medical issues and diagnoses, all their labs and the explanation for each stinkin' one ("sodium is a major cation in the extracellular fluid..."), and a handful of nursing care plans, plus a critique of a research article on a subject pertinent to the diagnosis. Thirty-five pages. Ugh.

So, the part I turned into her (and as part of the overall bigger stupid project) had all those labs and lab value explanations. And she asks me: "So, you did proofread it before you handed it in for good, right?" I'm sure all the color drained from my face when she asked... and I said that I did, but I got home this afternoon and saw exactly what she described: when I cut and pasted some labs, I forgot to delete the original boxes, and then on a very important lab, I had NO EXPLANATION. None whatsoever. Because I think I was going to delete that lab altogether - not every one is important - but I didn't, and they are picky, picky, picky, and together with all the other mistakes that are likely in there that I don't know about, well... it makes me sick to my stomach and fervently wishing I was just DONE with school. I felt like a dunce, even though I'd spent days and days and days working on it. It may sound like a minor oversight, but to a tired, frustrated professor who's stressed time and time again to proofread your case study prior to submission, who's already reviewed a handful of possibly crappy and possibly stellar submissions, and who finally gets to mine with a red pen that misses nothing? Recipe for a lower grade, it is. And I so need a good grade. The grade for this class determines where we'll do our senior practicum, which determines where we'll work after graduation, which could potentially set me back on my road to a certain graduate program, yet to be announced when I am certain I want to commit to all three years of it.

Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh... I just have to wait for the verdict now. Wish me the best. Think merciful vibes and send them to my professors.

why I ought to look in the mirror more

I couldn't figure out why people were giving me strange looks on the trail as I ran. I looked down at myself: all body parts that were supposed to be covered were covered. No gratuitous boob. No spare tire spillage. No peephole views to nether parts. No booger leakage. I was okay. So I just kept running and sweating and sizzling under the hot Florida sun (it was 87 degrees when I ran - wrong, wrong, wrong).

I wiped my brow and noticed the sweat was, well, PINK. And I didn't realize just how bad I looked until I got home, looked in the mirror, and saw that the hair dye I'd put in my hair the previous night must not have been completely washed out, because now, I had certainly sweated it out, all in little rivulets down my face, neck, and chest. And because red is my hair dye color of choice - "Rosewood", I believe it was called - the dye itself is the color of dark red blood. So I was running along Cady Way looking like the one-woman reenactment of Platoon. Nice.

I mean, why enjoy a boring walk down the trail when you can see sweating carnage run right past you?

shrinking, expanding...

Jason and I decided to make our weekly date for this morning and go to the Old Spanish Sugar Mill in DeLeon Springs, about a 45-minute drive from Orlando. It was one of those gorgeous days - sunny, mid-70's, light breeze - when you just want time to stand still so you can absorb as much of it as you can. So, before we went, I stopped off at my Weight Watchers meeting to weigh in for the week. The verdict:

Total lost so far: -29.4 (down 2.6 from last week)

The most I have ever lost so far has been 29.8... so this means I am not only less than a pound away from my goal to have 30 pounds lost by my birthday, but I am less than half a pound away from being my lowest weight in, I don't know, a bajillion years. I was so giddy about this that I couldn't stop talking about it during the 45-minute drive. I was sure Jason was going to pull over to the side of the road and say, "Yes, it's established: you're LOSING WEIGHT, okay?" like any human being, but being the super-dooper husband that he is, I just got props the whole time instead. What a man.

So, after an hour-long wait (it's a popular place), we chowed down on the best pancakes EVER. Really, if you live anywhere near DeLand, even within an hour or two, you must experience this place: you have a griddle in the middle of the table, and they bring you this pancake batter that is the thickest you've ever seen, in a giant ceramic pitcher, and they top it off by bringing you another pitcher of whole-grain batter (surprisingly good for being "healthy"), and then they top that with all sorts of toppings to put on your pancakes, like pecans and chocolate chips and apple slices and peanut butter and blueberries. Mmmmmmmm. And you can order eggs on the side, as well as bacon, sausage, and toast. And we did all of that and more, and it was just fabulous. Driving away, we were unbuckling our pants and letting out these huge sighs, but you have to experience these pancakes to know how deee-lish they are.

Now I'm at home, writing this lovely bit for my blog and trying not to fall asleep since I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend working on this nerve-wracking project for school... sigh...

when not to wear your nursing school uniform

--Going to the bad-times Super Wal-mart at the same time as a scary, spiky-haired blond guy who wears sunglasses indoors, stalks you down several aisles whilst staring at your chest, then approaches you in Sportswear to ask you multiple questions about his wife getting into your nursing school, apologizing several times and repeating, "I don't mean to scare you." UH-HUH.