Monday, June 19, 2017

Monday

I studied all day Saturday. And when I say all day, I mean all day, as in 14 hours all day. I got to bed around 4:00 a.m., got a few hours of sleep, then got up and studied all day Sunday, about 12 hours. I finally got to bed around 2 a.m.--and was up at 6:30 to get ready for school. I didn't have to be in class until 9:30, but I woke up before my alarm and just got up. I know when I'm exhausted that everything takes extra time--and I knew I would not be able to get back to sleep.

(I'm so exhausted that, last Friday, when another student asked me if he could use me to practice listening to lung sounds, I lay down on the hospital bed and felt like I could be asleep in about a minute and a half.)

I had coffee and a sunflower seed butter and blueberry-lemon-honey jam on toast for breakfast. 

I had prepped lunch the night before and made sure that my scrubs were in order. I had stacked up the books and notes I was going to take to class along with my computer and calculator, but I did not pack my backpack. (I'm resistant to that idea for some reason. When it comes to the contents of my backpack, I have to put my hands on everything to see if The Brain wants to take it or not and that has to happen at the last minute. I sometimes end up carrying things that might seem useless only because their primary use is as talismans. The Brain does not like to be unprepared.)

After the first exam (which fell out somewhere in the mid-B range), there was a bit of lecture. After lecture, I sat and ate part of my lunch and studied with two other students in class before taking the second exam. (I am also hoping for another mid-B on that exam, but it will be a week before I know my official grade in either class.)

It was a Monday. It was a Monday on too little sleep.

After the first exam, I walked over to the cafe in the library and got a latte. I carried it back to the classroom where I promptly spilled the entire thing on the floor. I got a mop from the supply closet lady, cleaned up the spill, then walked back to the cafe (this time with a friend from class) for another latte.

I've gotten out of the habit of taking photos. We're allowed to have our phones on us, but we are forbidden from taking photos of any of the procedures or classrooms or mannequins. And we are very, very strongly discouraged from taking photos that identify us or the school, especially if they are to be posted on social media. It's good to start breaking people of the habit now, but it means that I have nothing to show for show-and-tell here.

If I were still a picture taker, you might be looking at that spilled latte. You might be looking at the glass-walled study room where I sat with two twenty-something students, going over the material that we were about to be tested on. You might be looking at the cottonwoods that overhang the road that Dave and I sometimes drive in the evening when we go out to get giant fizzy drinks at Sonic and practice singing along to songs that we both know the lyrics too. (Not an easy task choosing those songs as we have very dissimilar taste in music generally, so we end up reaching back to The Smiths, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and older Paul Simon and Tom Petty songs. Tonight we sang along to what is probably my favorite modern song ever, "This Must Be The Place (A Naive Melody)" by the Talking Heads.



I love that song.)

Today was hot, probably over 100 degrees, hot enough to make me wonder what happened to March and April and May and now it's June and what happened to the first part of June? My head has been down for months and will be down for many more months and I note the seasons passing only because I had to walk across campus in the stifling heat. The next time I look up, there will be snow on the ground. I'm sure of it.

And on my next vacation, I'd like to go someplace where it rains. I want to live where it rains again. I want to walk out into grayness and humidity and I want to carry an umbrella again and have that self-conscious awareness of umbrella etiquette that is so unnatural to someone who grew up in the desert.

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