Last Week, This Is The

I wrote this in the past week and forgot about it completely.

Sunday:

The wind has been crazy all night and today too. Yesterday the temperatures climbed into the 80's--83F/28C, to be exact. Summer is coming and I suspect it's going to be brutal.

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up and wrote out an evaluation for the clinical rotation I'm finishing up this week. (Yay! Only two more days at the site. Boo! It's a self eval, which everyone hates doing, right? Right.)

Today I have to study for the final exam I have tomorrow in the lecture class, but first Dave and I are going to lunch with my mother and brother to a new burger place we've never tried. I'm sure it will be a salt bomb, but that's fine. (This is coming on top of the pizza that Dave made for dinner last night.)

I had a complete coma day yesterday--well, both Friday and yesterday, really--one of those days where I didn't shower and just stayed in my pajamas all day. I think we went out...did we? No. On Friday, Dave stopped by Costco on his way home and I texted him to suggest that, in addition to all the other stuff he was bringing, that he pick up dinner there, too. So he had a slice of cheese pizza and I had one of their yummy, fatty, salty barbecue sandwiches. We also made a salad at home just to have some veggies.

Yesterday I also stayed in all day. I did a bit of sewing. I stopped because I need to change the needle on my machine. I'm working on an impromptu quilt top out of this cheap fabric I bought online. $5 a yard seemed like a good deal--until I saw the quality of the stuff. The nice thing is, there is no pressure involved in cutting it up and sewing it back together willy nilly. I'm working with shades of pink and blue, which is giving the whole thing a very 1980's Miami Vice kind of feel to it. (Hey, Don Johnson was the hottest thing going, once upon a time. I'm just honoring that, here.) So far, I've got enough blocks sewn to make a very small twin-bed sized quilt, I think. But I want it to be bigger. I'm going to keep cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing, maybe until I run out of fabric. Then I'll start putting the blocks together. Of course, then it will turn out that I either have a quilt that will cover the state of Utah or I will be short one block to make it fit the bed and I'll have to go out and buy more fabric to finish it.

But it's almost like the cereal-milk thing where you run out of milk, so you add more milk to the bowl to finish the cereal--and then you run out of cereal and there's too much milk, so you add more cereal to finish them milk.

Monday:

There was no 7 a.m. lecture, but I still had to get into my scrubs and go sometime during the day to take my final exam at the testing center on campus. I had a "grrrr" moment when I went around lunchtime to take the exam--it was at a testing center and was supposed to be available from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.--and was told the exam had closed. The woman at the testing center had me sign in twice, no luck. The woman went off to speak to someone about the situation, so I left the testing room, retrieved my cell phone (we are not allowed to take book bags, cell phones, watches, etc., into the testing room) and texted my instructor. By the time he had texted back, I was able to sign in and take the exam.  92%. Not bad.

I came home, got back into my pajamas and tried to sleep the afternoon away. I finally fell asleep just before Dave arrived home (which was late, because he had an acupuncture appointment), but he didn't wake me when he came in. When I woke up about an hour later, I was very grumpy; I woke up in a bad mood after a bad nap and I had expected him to wake me up so that we could have dinner.

We ended up driving out for giant fizzy drinks and picking up a chicken nuggets kid's meal for me (incomplete, with a crappy toy) and a large order of tater tots to share. When we came home, Dave had quorn nuggets and we ate some broccoli and tomatoes, just to say we had eaten vegetables.

I couldn't get back to sleep, so I stayed up and Netflixed. Around 4:00 a.m. I had a sandwich (cheddar, tomato, mayo) and a liter of water, and then, about ninety minutes later, was able to get back to sleep.

Tuesday:

My usual day off from school. There are so many things I could and should be doing, but I'm not doing any of them. My energy is so low.

I was woken up around 10:30 by a group text from Kevin: Kelly was finally in surgery (after a delay of several days) and we shouldn't expect news for several hours. I have full confidence that she is going to be just fine, but that is because there is no other option. Period.

The plan for today includes nothing. Then going to the grocery store with my brother. Then more nothing.

I have two more days of clinicals to get through, then I have a two week break. Then it all starts again.

Wednesday and Thursday:

I wrote about, kind of.

Friday:

My first real vacation day. I am free until April 30th. I have a to-do list the length of my arm, so naturally I slept in. I got up and went to the grocery store with my brother, came home, put away my groceries, got back into my pajamas and went back to bed. I slept until the afternoon, got up, showered, got ready, and went to dinner with Dave, Grace, and Chris. We had, as Grace put it, dim sum and inappropriate laughter. My favorite combination.

Dave and I swung by Target after, to pick up a handful of things.

Then we came home and I got back into my pajamas. I turned on the internet and saw that Trump is trying to bomb his way out of domestic trouble. I'm sorry to the people of Syria--to the people of the world, that this idiot is in charge of anything. People are dying because of him and it's a whole shitty, sorry mess and every fake christian who voted for him will be answering for it at the gates of heaven one day--for standing alongside this loud-mouthed, narcissistic, racist rapist and murderer--before they get turned away.

It was cold and windy all day.

When I went to bed, I put on the heater and curled up under a blanket. After a few hours of sleep, I got up and couldn't get back to sleep. I surfed the internet for awhile and watched The Big Sick, which was nominated for an Academy Award recently. I liked it. I like Kumail Nanjiani and the story was sweet and touching and I love seeing Holly Hunter again. She has a way about her that I like to watch onscreen. After, I surfed the internet some more, had a snack (yogurt with a bit of the wonderful mangrove honey that Kelly and Kevin brought back from Florida for us last month)...and that brings us to now.

It's just after six a.m., and I just had another snack (an opal apple and a spoonful of sunflower seed butter) to go along with my coffee. I watched an episode of a British TV show from the mid-70s, called "Two's Company." It's a terrible show, but it stars Elaine Stritch, who I love. She has the character down pat, an independent, sarcastic, strong, funny, and capable woman. (Forty years later, she played an iteration of that same character on Tina Fey's show "30 Rock," which is where I first saw her.)

Saturday:

Yesterday was a kind of...day.

Dave and I went by the studio and played with Buzz and chatted with Paul and Judi. I cleaned up my workspace a bit, putting away the underglazes and glazed I had been using to touch up the things from the last firing that I want to put through the next firing. I'm casting about for an idea for a sculpture to make during the break, so I went through some books and sketched out some things. Nothing has gelled yet, so I may start to build and see what comes of it anyway.

After we left the studio, we came home and had lunch, quite a big lunch. We fried up some vegan "crab" cakes, stuck some frozen french fries in the oven, steamed some asparagus in the microwave, melted some butter with a bunch of fresh garlic in it, and heated up some leftover chili. It was a big lunch and we both needed naps after.

Early evening, we went out to Whole Foods for groceries. Dave and the cashier bonded over their love of red cabbage, which was weird. We also went by the co-op for the things they didn't have at Whole Foods. We talked to the cashier we always chat with and he kindly broke the $100 bill I've been carrying around for weeks. In a way, it's good, but it's a very "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink" situation.

We came home, put away all our groceries, and then did a quick clean up--fifteen minutes of damage control. I worked on the bathroom, Dave on the closet area. Neither of us got very far, but it was a start! I need to follow through with my plan to clean up the whole casita during the break.

After, I put on my pajamas and went back to bed. I rented a movie from Amazon--The Shape of Water--but didn't start watching it. I was too tired and didn't want to start it just to fall asleep.

And that was Saturday.