Life Off-Label

In November, I noticed that Warrior Dash is coming back to the Dallas area in April. I knew some friends who have done it, and I decided I want to do it, too. There was only one problem: I haven’t run seriously since about 8th grade, and was nowhere near prepared to do a 5K, which is part of the stipulation of completing the Warrior Dash. So, since I had plenty of time, I decided to try out the Couch to 5K program as a way of easing myself back into running.

The first week was a wake-up call to how out of shape I was. I only had to run in 60 second intervals, after which I would walk for 60 seconds, for 20 minutes total. That, yes that, left me pretty out of breath and exhausted.

By week 3, I could tell my endurance was getting better. Running for three minute segments didn’t seem too hard at all. I noticed some other benefits, too. I’ve started losing some of those stubborn last pounds I could never seem to get rid of, which is especially impressive considering how much I ate over Thanksgiving. It’s also been a GREAT way to let off some steam during finals week. Wait a second… am I actually enjoying cardio? The only downfall is that I’m prone to tendonitis around my knees, which is why I didn’t run much before, and it started flaring up, but I decided to tough it out. I iced my knees after workouts and looked into more stretches to do, and that seemed to help some.

Week 4 was a bit of a bigger leap. I ran five minutes at a time and was up to two miles of walking and running total. It’s almost 2/3 of a 5K, but I realized I still have a long way to go. I bought new shoes, and they are pretty amazing. There is such a huge difference in the way it feels when I run with them, and the knee pain has gone down dramatically.

I had a but of a hiatus the past couple of weeks, but it’s not entirely due to my laziness. I’ve made two trips up to Wisconsin (one, unfortunately, was unexpected for my grandmother’s funeral). I brought my running shoes and some gym clothes along just in case one of the hotels had an exercise room, but we spent so much time visiting with family that it would be pretty late by the time we got back, and I’m not dedicated enough to go running when it’s midnight and I’m feeling exhausted.

I got back to going to the gym when we got back to Texas this week, and I know once I get back to Oklahoma and settle into a routine again I should be more consistent with my running. Warrior Dash is still three months away, so I’m not panicking. I was good over Christmas, but family food (especially my aunt’s awesome peanut brittle) and catching up with old friends at various non-healthy restaurants have left me feeling a little heavier after this winter break. Hopefully the continued running will help shed some of that, and maybe in a few weeks I can update with some better progress!

When I was in undergrad, I couldn’t wait to get done with school and just work full time. After all… once you clock out, you’re done. No exams to study for, or homework to remember to do, or essays to put off until the last minute. Then when I was working full-time, especially once I found out I was accepted to pharmacy school, I couldn’t wait to be a student again. No more lazy coworkers that aren’t held accountable for it. Gone are the stressful moments of being in the middle of a tug-of-war with different people or tasks. I can study on my own schedule and set the rules on when I want to take a break.

Of course… then exams came around, and I wanted to just work again. At least when I was working I had a nice sleep schedule. I easily spend more than 40 hours a week between going to class, site visits, and studying. At work, you’re only evaluated on your performance once a year, and it’s pretty easy to pass that. It was also nice having an income instead of piling student loan debt.

Then I did my first day-long site visit (aka interning at a pharmacy for free). Until now, I had done them in spurts of a few hours at a time. I also made the mistake of doing this site visit on the first (open) day of the year. Oh boy. Since I didn’t ever deal with insurance at the hospital, the first day of the year didn’t have much of an impact on my workflow. I expected to be busy with people who didn’t get things taken care of over the holidays, but I was in for a rude awakening. Scripts were piling up and the phone would not. Stop. Ringing. After 9 hours of it, I was done. Take me back to the classroom please!

Then again, I never saw the retail part of the “working” grass as very green to begin with.

As sad as I want to be, a part of me can be nothing but happy. Yes, partly because I believe you’re going to a better place. But mostly because you’re suffering is over. I saw how much Alzheimer’s took away from you over the past few years, and it was that hardest thing I’ve had to witness. For the last year we didn’t get to bake with you, go bowling with you, get spoiled by you, or laugh with you. We sat in a room where we pretended it was okay to stare at each other and make small talk like we’re strangers, when deep inside the both of us are just screaming at nature to put things back to normal.

I’ll always treasure certain memories of you, like spending part of my summer with you to go to those classes at College for Kids and the Audubon Center, feeling fancy while eating lunch on top of the Hyatt hotel, repeated trips to the zoo and museum that never got old, those awesome Space Jam pajamas you sewed for me, fireworks over Lake Michigan, all of the free baking lessons you gave me over the years, and so many more. Your stories of milking cows, teaching in a one-room school, and eating lard sandwiches during the depression remind me just how spoiled I am. I also love how good of a friend you were to my other grandma. You helped her get her American citizenship, and after my Opa died you taught her how to drive so she could get her drivers’ license. You and my other grandma grew up with much more adversity than I’ll ever have to, in times where society said women were supposed to be weak, and your strength throughout is what inspired me to be strong as a woman.

I’m positive I’ll never try a better recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies as long as I live. Many people know those cookies because of how delicious they are, but I’ll always remember them for sentimental reasons. The first thing I used to do when I came to your house, after you greeted me with a big hug, was run into the kitchen and snatch a cookie out of the cookie jar. There was nothing better to wake up to in the morning than the smell of them baking in the oven, and I think that smell is part of what made the house so warm and welcoming.  When we were visiting you at Bay Point, going to that familiar cookie jar and biting into a cookie is one of the things that still gave me that warm feeling again.

Christmas wasn’t the same without you this year. We had such a nice routine… spend the day baking and preparing everything for the feast that would be dinner later, attend the beautiful mass at Our Lady of Good Hope, tear through the stockings after mass, and get the visit from Santa. Carrie made a beautiful scrapbook that shows almost 25 years of the whole family gathering at that house, and I think that’s a testament to the value of family that you and grandpa have instilled in each of us. It was a given, we went to grandma’s for Christmas, but it wasn’t ever a chore. It was something I looked forward to all year. As much as I miss you though, I know that Christmas in heaven with grandpa sounds a lot more appealing than Christmas here with Alzheimer’s, and I don’t blame you for choosing the former. Love you!

My math teacher was right. We do need math, and we will use it a lot in the “real world”. I find myself using math quite often in college, especially toward the end of the semester. I figure out the bare minimum I need to do on the final to achieve each letter grade in my classes. I doubt that’s what my math teacher had in mind though.

We all do it. We tally up the points and see how many more we need for an A, B or C. Or we take our exam averages and weigh them out accordingly. Some classes make things trickier by factoring in our lab grades or adding arbitrary “participation” categories where we have no idea how many points we’ve accumulated. In those cases though, I make sure to give myself hypothetical best-case and worst-case scenarios. Even if the teacher hinted there would be one, I assume no curves. And finally, if you’re anything like me, you add a few points in case your math was a little off.

After all that calculating, and I’m not sure why, but more often than not I find that I’ll need something like a 50 for the lower letter grade and an impossible 128 for the higher letter grade. Sure, there might be a curve, but I’ve never scored 100 on any exam in my college career ever. It’s not gonna happen now. No matter how diligently I study, there’s those few details here and there that I forgot to touch on and I’m always the one who gets tricked on trick questions. So since I’m not going to ace my final, I have to accept that I’ve set myself up right in the middle, in the Land of Schlibbity-5, where the grade I have is the grade I’m going to get and there’s not really anything the final will do about it. It can be a bit discouraging, but on the bright side, I can chill out a little bit. After all, I’ll still get the same PharmD with B’s and C’s as the person who has a 4.0, so might as well not waste time and energy fretting over it. And maybe I’m biased, but I firmly believe people who can balance work and fun make better pharmacists anyway.

If you’ve been studying all day, you reach a point late into the evening where your brain says, “Look, I can’t absorb anything else. This is enough for one day. It no longer matters how much caffeine you drink. I’m done.”

At one point, “The Planets” by Gustav Holst shuffled into my playlist, and then my studying was epic. By the way… I’m pretty sure that guy is John Williams’ idol. “The Imperial March” has “Mars” written all over it.

Speaking of me being a band nerd, here’s a random video I found while on a “study break” (aka getting distracted):

Percussion and Harry Potter… two of my loves united at last! The part that really caught my attention though was around 1:43 when he starts splitting 16th notes with himself. To get them to sound so uniform, just like as if one person is playing them, is hard enough to do with another person standing right next to you. But he does it in two separate shots! That takes absolutely flawless timing to get that to line up so well when you edit the video together. It’s possible he had a metronome going in the background that we can’t hear in the video, but I’m still impressed. Also… he’s 16.

You know how you know you’re lame? When your Saturday night consists of studying, YouTube-ing, and blogging. I miss the days of undergrad when playing beer pong was an acceptable way to study for finals. We also had dead week. Now we just have “What’s sleep?” week… for two weeks.

I can’t believe how quickly this semester flew by. I feel like it was last week that I was sitting in a chair, anxiously waiting to walk across the stage at the white coat ceremony. Seems like only a few days ago I was bubbling in answers on my first exam. Now I’m studying for finals. Time flies when you’re having fun, and I had a bit of that, but I think time flies faster when you’re kept so friggin’ busy.

One more week!

Last week, my dad called me and told me that my grandfather was admitted to the hospital for acute renal failure. He had cancer for some time and had been in and out of the hospital for the past several months, but this instance was different. My dad informed me that he decided to no longer receive any treatments, go into hospice, and stay with my grandma in their assisted living apartment. He was given a prognosis of about a week, so last weekend my sister and I flew up north from our respective schools to visit him one last time.

We got in Friday morning and stopped by to see him right away. He was laying in bed and napping. We tried talking to him, but he would give half of a response before dozing off again. Oh morphine. It’s okay though. We weren’t expecting to engage in a six hour discussion over various things in life. We just wanted him to know that we were there and that we made the trip up there for him because we love him.

We spent the night going through various pictures of the family over the years. My sister joked that I was grandpa’s favorite because I was always the one sitting on his lap the first few Christmases. We laughed at how much dad in the 70s looks like a hipster now. We “awww”ed over the many cute pictures of grandma and grandpa hugging and smiling with each other at various places in their almost 60 years of marriage. We cringed at the embarrassing photos from our awkward puberty years (and made sure they didn’t happen to make their way into a funeral slideshow). It was through these pictures that we saw how great and full of a life our grandpa lived. He raised four amazing children, and when they grew up and made him proud he got to see six grandchildren. For the better part of 25 years, those children and grandchildren gathered at my grandparents’ house for Christmas every year. My grandparents weren’t ever short on friends, either. After my grandpa retired, my grandparents traveled all over and got to see amazing sights along their way. I’m sure it didn’t come without its share of hard work and obstacles, but it was a life many people would love to have.

My grandma is in a very late stage of Alzheimer’s, and that was initially the reason they moved into the assisted living facility. When I last saw her a year ago she didn’t recognize me any more. She needs a wheelchair to get around, and when she speaks the phrases don’t always make sense and sound kind of random. But after my dad tucked her in her hospital bed next to my grandpa’s and said good night, she mumbled, “We did our best.” My dad smiled and told her that’s right.

We stayed the night in a guest apartment at the assisted living facility. Early in the morning, I heard my dad get up and leave the room. When he got back, he woke my sister and I up and told us we should head over to grandpa’s apartment soon, as the hospice nurse told him grandpa was only going to last a few more hours. We weren’t expecting to hear that while we were up there, but we got ready and headed over there immediately. He was there as we saw him last night, lying there peacefully with his oxygen mask around his face and the stereo softly playing church hymns in the background. My aunt was sitting at his side in her pajamas holding his hand.

At 7am a nurse aid arrived to get my grandma ready and take her to breakfast. We waited in the living room while she got grandma ready and then we helped her get grandma into the wheel chair. When my aunt went to sit with grandpa again, she noticed his hand felt cold. We called the nurse to confirm what we already knew. I don’t know if he intended to wait us to get distracted so we wouldn’t actually see it, but it seemed that he passed away while we were in the other room.

He still looked so peaceful.

When it sank in, we spent a few minutes crying and giving each other hugs. My grandma got back from breakfast, and my uncle broke the news to her. At first she was a little confused because my uncle initially told her “dad” passed away, but when he further explained with the words “your husband”, she jerked back in the wheelchair and sank her head as low as it could go. For someone who mostly stares at you when you try to talk to her, I will never forget that. Somewhere, deep down, I could hear grandma’s heart shattering into a million pieces.

Grandpa died with some of the people who love him most right there with him in his last hours. You can have a successful career, drive a flashy car, or own a thousand Coach purses, but those things mean nothing at the end of the day. It only matters who you’ve touched in your life and how much of an impact that’s had on those people. Grandpa was one of those people who appreciated that, being a positive influence on all of us, and I’m glad to have spent this much of my life knowing him. He and my grandmother, through their endless generosity toward others, taught me the value in being selfless and sacrificing for others. Being a Brewers season ticket holder all those losing years showed me how truly unconditional love can be. Whether it was a game of softball in the backyard or a game of cards in the dining room, he showed me that it’s okay to not take everything so seriously and just have fun. The grandchildren always knew that going with him on a walk to the gas station for milk meant candy for us, and I’m pretty sure he’s the reason my first two words were “ice cream”.  If I listen closely, I can hear him singing church hymns to us from Heaven.

Maybe God will give him a few pointers on how to grill something less than well-well done though. Love you, Grandpa!

Every big school has them. People have different definitions for this term, but I define a t-shirt fan as a fan who obnoxiously supports a school to the point that they lack class, and as a consequence one school will look down on another when they see this behavior. This can include some students, but for the most part it’s people who never attended the school and have a very blind support for the football team. They might like that the school has more championships, or the shirt was $9.99 at Walmart. Sometimes they are simply supporting the largest school in their home state, or they know family and friends that attended there. Whatever the reason, whenever someone puts on their team’s shirt and acts in a way that reflects poorly on that school, it irritates me.

Non-t-shirt fans generally have more than a one-dimensional pride in their school, so we don’t need to shout with someone about who has the best football team. My degree gives me more pride than anything my football team accomplishes on the field. Yes, it sucks we lost that big game this year, but whatever. There’s always next year. Plus, we often know people who attend the rival schools, so we have a general respect for the other schools and their fans.

I’m attending my alma mater’s football rival for pharmacy school, and I’ve sported my old school colors occasionally in class or at the gym. Especially after our performance in the Red River Shootout, I expected a few comments, but for the most part they are meant in good humor. However, I have yet to wear burnt orange at some rinky dink gas station in small-town Oklahoma. Why? I know that those comments won’t be so kind, and I like to avoid that kind of confrontation as much as possible.

To be fair, I have seen a couple truckers do it, but big burly trucker guy can probably hold his own in a fight better than I could.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the t-shirt fans. Without them, UT wouldn’t sit above every other college football program in annual revenue. I don’t blame people in Oklahoma for deciding to support OU’s football team, especially considering the lack of an NFL team in Oklahoma, and I’m sure it’s great for the local economy. So I’m not going to sit here and condescendingly say that these fans aren’t wanted just because they didn’t go to school there. I welcome any and all support for my school.

I just wish some of those people had a better idea of how much they reflect the school when they conduct themselves in public. I mean I see stories like this and just want to shake my head. 99% of OU fans would never even think of doing something so low, but that reflects on the school now. I cringe when I see UT fans get in bar fights and use expletives in “debates” I’ve never even heard of before. No true fan would do things like that, because a true fan respects the school enough to know how to handle a rivalry with class.

One of my fondest memories as a child was baking with my grandma. Her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies were a favorite with… well anyone with taste buds who’s tried them, and her cookie jar was never empty. Even though she had one of those Cuisinart mixers, she didn’t typically use it. She didn’t need to. She had several little helper grandkids and forearms of steel. I still remember, after we took turns adding the ingredients to the bowl (and sometimes the table and floor), she’d have us stir it all together. After a little while, it got to a point where we couldn’t stir it anymore, and we’d hand the bowl over to her. We sat there in awe as she whipped the spoon around the bowl like there was pudding in it. I really thought she was the Superwoman of baking.

When we were in lab triturating emulsions, I was reminded of that experience. We had to essentially stir a sticky goop around the mortar for several minutes, and after a while it got a little tiring. I wished I could just pass it off to grandma and have her to finish it.

One of my favorite quotes by one of my professors is, “I love cooking. It’s just compounding in the kitchen!” It’s true. I find it neat how much compounding so far has paralleled cooking and baking. You measure the ingredients, follow the directions on the recipe, and you get your product! Last week, several people struggled with the Wet Gum Method for making emulsions, but I got it on the first try. I’m pretty sure I can thank grandma for that!

I had been watching The Weather Channel throughout the afternoon. Southeast of us a tornado had touched down, and a solid line of storms was marching right in our direction. As the evening passed, the storms drew closer. Rain began to pellet our windows and subtle roars of thunder clapped in the distance. All of a sudden, my apartment started shaking, as if the wind randomly gusted to 100mph. I could picture my building swaying, and the ground started vibrating. Am I in a tornado? Why didn’t The Weather Channel know it was coming?

I thought Texas had some pretty strange weather. I’ve been through several hail storms. I remember being at work when they called a code black because a tornado touched down nearby. I’ve had to turn around because the road ahead was so flooded you could go whitewater rafting down it. I’ve had to be outside for band practice in 100+ degree temperatures, and in the same year driven on roads so icy you could play a hockey game on them.

But I’ve never experienced an earthquake, let alone one in the middle of a thunderstorm. Only in Oklahoma. I have a new appreciation for Texas weather now.

That said, it wasn’t anything too bad. *knock on wood* And now I get to say I’ve been through one!

Pharmacy school is stressful. (In other news… the sky is blue.) We have to learn a lot of material, and we have a lot of exams to test that. After you consider involvement in organizations, making sure we get in all of our IPPE hours, and other commitments we might have in our personal lives, we spend much of our time constantly going from one thing to the next.

I realized a couple weekends ago though just how beautiful it can be to have a little mini vacation and do absolutely nothing. We just had a pretty intense week of exams, but there wasn’t anything pressing the next week. I slept in until noon both days for the first time in a while, and the most productive thing I did was finish season one of “True Blood”. It was a nice little vacation for my brain, and I’m glad I took it, because after that I was ready to get back into the swing of things.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I get most of that week off. It’ll be another nice time for a little breather, but then we have finals right after that. From what I hear, it’s a time where sleeping is but a memory and we will consume enough caffeinated drinks to bring Texas out of the drought. Now is a good time to invest in some Red Bull stock.

When we can’t take a break, we all do different things to deal with the stress. I sometimes take a quick break at the gym, bake a comfort food, go out for a drink or two with some friends, or write a few words on this thing. Lately, I’ve taken to listening to Christmas music while studying. I know most of you will judge me for that, since society seems to think the happiness of Christmas needs to be restricted to a little “season”. In my defense, it puts a lot of joy into a moment where I’d otherwise feel like I want to rip my hair out, and it reminds me of the nice month-long break I can look forward to after I’ve taken care of things. I’m definitely to the point now where I’ve started counting down days until that break.

40 more days!