A Quarter, In Sum - or, "What I've Been Up To Since November"

Well. It's been over 3 months since I last updated this thing. No "ohhh, I've been so busy"s, or "Ahhh, this awful  or great thing happened"... I just kinda didn't write anything for a while, and then I'd start to, but it had been so long, and then this happened - I'll blog about it! No, not sure I'm ready to put that out there yet - or that happened - what do I say about this? - and then it had been waaaay too long, and then... So, here I am. 

A quick-for-3-months-of-ground-to-cover update of the goings-on since my last posting:

1. I went to Isle of Palms/Charleston for a full week over Thanksgiving and had a fabulous, much-needed vacation. Unfortunately, I felt pretty crappy leading up to, through, and after said vacation, and started IVs the week after returning. My PICC line placement for this particular round of IVs was the worst I've had since they became routine, as my vein spasmed so severely that the radiologist couldn't get the line past my shoulder, and had to stitch the line to my arm to keep my vein from "squeezing" the line out of my arm. Yeesh. Statlocks are totally underrated. 

2. I picked up a new, slightly more insidious and hard-to-treat bacterium, and started a new course of treatment for that. It required discontinuing an old-standby course that I had apparently become quite attached to, so the adjustment has been a bit unnerving, but now that I have a better grip on the science of why we're taking this particular approach, I'm able to relax a bit. 

3. I finally admitted to myself that the anxious tendencies that I was able to channel so successfully in undergrad were no longer quite so productive, that the rapidly spinning hamster wheel that simply is my psyche had picked up the pace and wasn't letting up, and that "feisty" had given way to "frenetic"....and therefore, caved and got some help. My CF doctor had been after me for quite some time to do so, but I was always convinced that I was only stressed out because of "x", and as soon as "x" resolved, I'd be back to normal. 

But then, I looked over my shoulder and realized it had been about 5 years of this cycle of "x" happening, getting bent out of shape and slightly neurotic while waiting for "x" to resolve, catching up from the collateral damage "x" caused, getting OK again, then being hit by another "x", and so on and so on. Eventually I got to the point that I couldn't even really just relax and enjoy the lulls between crises, because I was so paranoid that if I let myself get too happy,  I was somehow sending out a karmic invitation for the other shoe to drop again. I haven't been able to magically undo 5+ years of compounding, uptight, fear-based habits and thought patterns in three months, but I'm slowly learning, at least, that being content doesn't make me lazy, being uncertain doesn't make me stupid, and being anxious doesn't protect me from bad things any more than being happy invites them. It's a work in progress, but one I'm glad I've started. 

4. I got through Christmas. I'm getting to that grown-up place where it's safe to admit that Christmas will probably never again be as exciting as it was when I was, say, seven, and that's OK; the place where I can quit trying to hope that certain things and people that have always been a certain way will magically change this year, and quit feeling guilty about the fact that I don't most anticipate the things and people that are supposed to be heartwarming that aren't. Who says? This year, I decided to just expect the same blah things to be blah, get through them, and take the traditions that really mean most to me and bring me crazy joy about the holidays and just sort of smush them together and call that "Christmas" and be happy with it. 

And I did - I decorated the tree with my mom. I parked at a table with my best friend at our favorite restaurant for an entire evening simply eating way too much and drinking and catching up  and celebrating. I got up at the utter crack 'o dawn on Christmas Eve to go out for breakfast and go shopping and generally just have a fabulous time with my dad. I went out for Japanese with my aunt, uncle, and cousin for our annual "Godfamily's dinner" Christmas Eve night. I opened one gift - pajamas, always pajamas - and stayed up late talking to my mom before heading to bed (a post-Santa ritual, mind you). And I gave myself permission to soak in the joy of these things, and had one of the best Christmases in recent memory.

5. I applied to (and was rejected from) a very competitive political science PhD program in the eleventh hour. I had fabulous recommendation letters (one over three pages in length), a pretty great statement of purpose, and a more-than-suitable GPA, but I literally turned in my application the final day possible... and wasn't even able to take my GRE until after my application was submitted - see # 6. I prepared as best I could, but severely underestimated the impact of my decades-long, squeaking-by-and-finagling-facade-'o-mathematical-competence. For real, folks; I took Deductive Logic - a philosophy course - and a Math Theory class (focused primarily on the history of numerical systems) as my only two required "math" courses in college. Homey Hates Tha Digits. 

Unfortunately, the computerized format did me no favors, either. It requires the test-taker to answer a given question before moving on to another, does not allow her to view any other question before answering, and forbids the changing of any previous answers once she has moved on. So...no, "Hey, the little piece of the formula I need for problem #13 can be found in the directions to problem #17! Problem #13 solved!" or, "How the hell does one solve #14, and why does it matter? I know how to do #15-23 without a problem, so I'll just skip #14 and move on to those! Points Points Points for me!" It's probably a better assessment of actual knowledge, I'll give them that. But for a girl who grew up looking forward to and actually enjoying standardized tests, realizing that a life-time of mad testing skillz is virtually useless on the only standardized test she actually needs to do well on inspires sentiments along the lines of, "well, poo."* 

*other terms may or may not have been substituted for "poo".

6. I got freaking snowed out of the GRE! This has been the snowiest, slushiest, so-not-the-south-iest winter I ever remember. My GRE was in December, but it snowed - as in, actual, meaningful, plan-changing accumulation - every weekend in February. And while yes, we do get disproportionately worked up about crystallized precipitation, and no, I do not understand how bread or milk are supposed to increase one's odds of survival in case of a wintry apocalypse (or culinary variety in case of a power outage), and that in 8 out of 10 situations I will side with the transplants in arguments about how bas-ackwards things can be down here, I must take this opportunity to state that smug Yankee amusement at southern snowpanic is beyond annoying. Particularly because anyone who's been around here for any meaningful amount of time knows that it's not the stupid snow we're worried about; it's ice. Inches-thick sheets of ice against which your super-badass-4-wheel-drive-snowtires are useless. And black ice. Ice that exists even on otherwise dry roads and appears to be simply repaved patches or puddles or sometimes doesn't even appear at all. And that's all I have to say about that. 

I'm never one of these people who haaaaaattttteeeesss winter, and gets yipee!yippee!yipee! excited about the first hint of spring. Infact, early spring makes me a little anxious, as it generally just means that now I have to start shaving consistently and reaffirming to myself that I am a human with dignity, even if I'm lacking in pigment. But this year, I've got spring fever like none other. Birds are chirping! Frogs are screeching! Pollen is everywhere! And I'm actually really really excited! I've even shaved my legs!

7. Per the aforementioned rejection, and the quantitative GRE score that likely caused it, I've taken up teaching myself algebra in my free time.

8. I'm finally getting a Port put in at the end of the month. After my last PICC experience, I cried uncle and decided to just go ahead and do it, prompting my CF doctor to reply, "You're always about six to nine months behind the advice curve, aren't you?" I suppose, when it comes to things I'm afraid of or otherwise hesitant about, I just have to make certain that I'm truly miserable with the status quo before taking a risk on the newfangled suggestion. Anyway, I wanted to make sure I got it put in waaaaay before I needed it, so it would have time to heal before being poked and prodded and taped. I also wanted to meet with an actual radiologist, or endovascular surgeon, or someone before having the thing put in, to discuss my placement options, hardware options, etc. Evidently most people at my center just go under and wake up with it wherever, so this was a bigger feat than anticipated, but one I wasn't willing to budge on. So it's taken until the end of March to get an appointment + procedure scheduled, but it'll still be in plenty of time to heal up nicely before summer requires greater skin-bearage, or before I have to lug my stuff through the Chicago airport in April.

9. What? Chicago airport in April? That's right, folks. This crazy TBI research project I've been working on since, hrrrmmmm my last semester of college (aka "the thesis that won't die") was accepted for presentation on an actual panel (not a poster, and not some undergrad rookie thing) and the Midwest Political Science Association 2010 Conference (!!!!). So I'm going with my co-authors to present our research in April. Ahh! Very excited - I'm hoping this will really give me some insight as to whether this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I'll be able to sit in on several other panels and presentations, learning a ton and getting lots of ideas for further research, I'm sure. I'm just hoping the conference experience itself (and the work leading up to it to prepare) will help clarify whether I want to pursue the academic research path, or a more independent, multi-disciplinary writer-who-researches path. No matter what, I'm sure I'll get a lot out of it, hopefully meet some fabulous people, and oh-by-the-way, be able to go the rest of my life knowing I was first author on a research paper accepted for conference presentation. As an undergrad. 

10. I got a perm. MM-HMMM, that kind of perm, yes, the 80's-associated-chemically-burning-ones-hair-into-a-hopefully-natural-appearing-pattern-of-curl perm. I've wanted one for a while, as I feel like I have more of a curly-haired personality in my own little algorithm of hair-as-indication-of-persona. But I felt all 80's, and My-Name-Is-Earl, and...ermmmm. My hairstylist did one for her daughter who wanted hair like Taylor Swift, and I was impressed; I had first-hand evidence that it was true, they had come a long way, and they did not have to be the finger-in-socket nightmares of decades past. So I decided to go for it ...knowing I could blow it out if I hated it. But I didn't hate it! I loved it! I'll try and take a picture soon to share. But in the meantime, just trust that I can now go from shower-to-car in 20 minutes, looking/feeling completely put together and presentable and "done"...something I haven't been able to do since probably 3rd grade. Yay hair chemicals!

...And that's pretty much it. How nice and neat, this coincidental-list-of-10. I think I'll just leave it at that. Nice to be back.