MMXVI

Happy new year! I hope your new year is better than the last.

I had YarnKettle over for New Years and was reminded that I haven’t updated in a while. It was nice to have people over for New Years. I’ve been a bit of a hermit during the semester. Every second of free time was spent either with the Husband and OP or doing homework. I did see my college besties a couple times, which was awesome, but I missed my non-school friends more than I realized. I need all my friends to stay sane. Or sane-ish.

At least I’m finished with my first semester of the internship. Wait, let me rephrase. I survived my first semester of the internship. Yay! It was tough, but so amazing. It confirmed that I am following the right path for me. I loved each rotation. I may not have enjoyed every location or every task, but I absolutely loved what I did each day. Next semester is 10 weeks at a hospital. I’m a bit scared, but it will be good.

Wow, I sound way too sappy, but I’ll take it. I’d rather be sappy than crying my eyes out.

I am so tired…maybe

I’m three weeks into my internship. Where the heck did time go? I am tired and frustrated by this experience, but I’m not as tired as I like to think and am really enjoying it. How’s that for contradictions?

I’m tired because I get up at 5am so I can get in a short 20 minute workout, eat, get myself together, get the child together, and sometimes drop her off at day care before I leave. (No, I don’t leave her at home on the other days. The Husband drops her off). All that to get to my rotation at 7:30. I spend most of the day on my feet, running around like a mad woman and not eating. Yeah, I lost 3 pounds in the first 2 weeks because I couldn’t figure out when to eat during the day. That’s getting better, thankfully. I come home, make and eat dinner, get the child to bed, do homework for about 30 minutes, watch 5 minutes of TV with the Husband, and then go to bed between 8:30-9:00.

It sucks.

I have to go to bed early so I can get up early, but then I don’t seem to get homework done. Thankfully, I had the brilliant idea to keep getting up at 5am on the weekends. This means I don’t have a screwy schedule and I get used to these hours AND I have 2-3 hours on the weekends guaranteed to get work done. That and my in-laws have taken the child a bit. Although, right now I feel overwhelmed. As soon as I get something done and feel accomplished, I turn around and have 5 more things due. *sigh*

Oh my goodness, my life is dull. BUT I just have to get through 10 months and all the schedules will be different. In theory. Oh please, don’t have a rotation where I have to get up at 3am.

In the meantime, I haven’t gotten much non-school things done, but this is okay. I did knit a few items over the summer and I used up 4 skeins! I went from 70 to 66 and have more stash-busting ideas! Is it bad that all my projects right now are chosen for their stash-busting properties? I don’t think so, because I do like the projects I have selected on top of stash busting. Of course, there may be a yarn festival coming up soon which could potentially mean more yarn. No, I will be strong.

What else? I’m currently making oatmeal bars, muffins, and egg things to act as quick, on-the-go breakfast items to streamline my mornings. That, or I’m procrastinating by baking. Still, I do need to do it, which is what I’m telling the Husband. Don’t tell him it’s really procrastinating.

The Great Unknown

My orientation is complete and my first internship day is Monday. First and foremost, I’m scared. It’s a new experience and I am often worried about what I don’t know. It was worse before the orientation. I now have a list of my tasks and I now know what I can expect going in. So, I’m scared, but I’m more excited now.

I also question if I’m making a terrible mistake. I admit, I felt this way after quitting my job and going back to school. And I continued to feel that way until I made a few friends and got the rhythm of the program (so, about a week into the first semester). Once I got the hang of school again, I fell in love with nutrition and knew this was for me. I can only hope that after the first week of internship, I feel the same way. Of course, it’s food management, and the DPD classes for food management make me less inclined to work in that area. But, I’m keeping an open mind. I may find that actually doing the work is what I love, not learning about it. Maybe I’ll want to run a kitchen. Or maybe not.

I worry that I will fail miserably and let down the people who accepted me into this program. I’ve worked at a few jobs in my time and I know, logically, that I can do it, but I’m still worried that I will fail. I also fear that I will ask too many questions and annoy the preceptors. I do ask a lot of questions because I want to make sure I understand the issue. I suspect this is from programming since I needed to make sure I understood my client’s needs before I spent 20 hours on the wrong thought process.

I have a tendency to focus on one thing at a time–work or family or self. I can’t, during the semester, focus on more than one. Work always wins, followed by family, and I ignore self. Which may be why I gained 10 pounds during the last year of classes–I only had time for food, not exercise or meditation. I really want to use my time better to maintain balance rather than go for the A. I mean, I need to get that A, but an A- is okay. Of course, I do tell myself this at the beginning of every semester and fail miserably. This time I will get it figured out.

Right now, I’m ready to get started and just want to get the waiting over. That’s really the hard part.

Back to Sanity, of a sort…

When I was a kid, my dad would jokingly tell me eating something or trying something new/hard was “good for you! It would put hair on your chest!” Which is what every young girl wants. This semester? It put tons of metaphorical hair on my chest. Four hard, project-filled graduate classes coupled with working for the department grading papers (another class in its own right with the number of essays I had to read) equaled me curled up in a ball crying for the first five weeks. I complained so much to the Husband that he took a pair of knives and gouged his ears so he would never hear me speak of it again. So, of course I mimed my suffering until he did the same to his eyes.

He didn’t really do that. He just ignored me. A lot.

So, the semester was intense. It’s my fault because god forbid I do less than perfect work and pay attention in class and get an A and make sure to talk to professors so they know me and can write a reference and do well even if I have no clue what I just learned. For example I gave up on a paper, declared it was crap but a B was good enough for me! I got an A. What I consider B-level is apparently A-level work and trying to do A-level work is putting in too much time. Next semester, I’m aiming for B’s, which is what I said this semester and the semester before….

Of course, I slacked in most areas of life in my quest for an A, especially exercise. And I comfort ate like you would not believe. I’m not happy, but I’m determined to get back into a healthier habit over break. Which means it’s the perfect time for my knee to go out! The Husband took my to New York City to see Pippin (one of my favorite musicals and an amazing performance) after the semester ended, and I torqued my knee trying to let someone through the aisle at the performance. Fortunately, the knee only took me out a couple days and I could exercise again. Until, that is I got knocked flat on my back with a nasty cold…illness…thingy. Yeah, two weeks of break and I was a pathetic mess.

But the pity party is over. I’m healthy again (mostly) and my knee is fabulous. I got a work out today and I even vacuumed part of the house! I am determined to turn things around and stop wallowing in negativity. I’m getting my butt out and putting my health first. I exercised today instead of cleaning the house and I’m doing it again tomorrow! Heck, I may even read for fun instead of clean a toilet. Or not. The toilets are getting gross.

I’m sneezing

Happy New Year, um, 22 days ago! I spent the last 10 seconds of 2013 yelling that I had a knot in my yarn and I can’t start the new year with a knot! We’ll see if tangled yarn is an omen to how the year will go. I’ve only knit once since the new year. Hopefully, if it is an omen, it’s not knitting related. Really, I just need to get a simple project on the needles. Maybe tomorrow.

Classes started on Tuesday. The 8am class was cancelled due to the professor’s sickness (yay for me!). The second class and related lab were not (boo!). The second class was food science and it looks…daunting, but don’t they all?

We are all sick right now. I think it’s a cold, but there are a lot of sniffles and coughing over this way. Don’t come near us or you risk contamination. The down-side of being sick is that I couldn’t do my volunteer work today. For my degree, I need to volunteer 24 hours in some sort of nutrition/food area. I’ve been volunteering with a woman who teaches various nutrition classes, and it has been really fun. The last few classes were how to eat with diabetes. I was cooking for the classes, but couldn’t today because I am sick. I don’t want give someone norovirus, not that I have norovirus, but still.

I’ve been finding the class interesting for two reasons. First, I learned was that I love cooking for people and showing them how to eat healthy food that also tastes good. When I’m looking for experience and jobs, I need to keep that in mind.

The second thing I found interesting is how applicable one of the concepts was to life. Hold on, it’s going to get cheesy and preachy for a bit. One of the questions asked by the nutritionist is, “Can you drink OJ?” The attendees said, no. However, the reality is yes, you can drink OJ, but you need to keep it within limits and adjust other parts of your meal. Wait, let me stop a second. I am not yet a dietitian or even a nutritionist. I am a student. I am talking about what they said in a research-based class. I’m not going to argue what your doctor, mother, crunchy friend, etc. has told you. If you want more information about this topic, see a REGISTERED DIETITIAN or diabetes-certified dietition. I discovered in class that if you have diabetes, your insurance usually will cover a visit or two to a dietitian.

Anyway, so, per the research-based class, you can have OJ. How? Well, at meals a diabetic should get roughly 45-60 grams of carbs per meal (AGAIN, SEE A REGISTERED DIETITIAN FOR SOMETHING SPECIFIC TO YOU OR MORE SPECIFIC IN GENERAL). So a 1/2 cup of OJ is 15 g of carbs, if I remember correctly. That means, you can have a 1/2 cup OJ and still be within your limit. If you like a large glass of OJ and a big bowl of cereal and milk (milk has carbs), then, you need to figure out a compromise and adjust accordingly. Maybe cut down the size of your cereal so you are within limits, keep the OJ small, or replace the cereal with eggs or something less carb-laden. Simple, right? However, listening to the teacher talk about compromising on food, hit home for every day things. In life, you need to make compromises. If I want to exercise daily, I need to let go of getting a perfect grade on a project or stop worrying about cleaning everything. If I want to spend time with my family, then I need to pull back on work or extra-curricular activities. If you don’t want to kill yourself, you need to figure out what you can live with. It’s something I always knew, but when the teacher said it, I finally understood. Now, we’ll see if I can remember it.