I do it for love

I do believe that I'm two months into my vacation, or what I usually call/shout for joy in my head as "Freeeedddooooommmm". Yes, exactly like that.

I've spent time in San Francisco to see relatives, and Yosemite, and well, a place other than Arizona. I've spent time in hospitals that had nothing to do with my clinicals but with people I personally know being there, and oh for an interview, followed by medical appointment to see if I'm TB-free or something, and an orientation for the volunteer work I applied for. I've been in other places, like the library fifteen minutes away by car, and restaurants and shops, and movie theaters, and other places, like the post office and the FedEx store, sometimes to apply for work and more often to simply be a patron. I've read books, some new, some old, some borrowed, and some bought. And then there were the days when I slept for hours and hours, and didn't the next day, and then took naps. I guess I've been having fun, no, no. I am having fun.

I'd have been in Canada to see my sister and my cousins, and their babies, but that wasn't what happened. Instead I'm currently in California, though not in daisy dukes or bikini tops. I don't have those in my luggage. And I'm not really here for vacation. I'm here to help my aunt around the house since she had a fracture on her leg and it's less painful to stay on the bed than on her feet. Although currently I'm more house-sitting than anything since she hasn't left the hospital since she got injured while working there.

Solitude wasn't really a problem until I ran out of books, could not get a decent Wi-Fi signal that didn't require a password, and couldn't use her car since I needed a remote for the community's gate to get back in. For days it was wake up, fix bed, bathroom, open computer, cook/eat, wash dishes, computer, cook/eat/dishes, throw trash out, and bathroom breaks in between. The first time I tried watching TV I just got sore, teary eyes. I wasn't used to watching TV for long hours since I started school. The radio was okay to tune into until it wasn't anymore. Oh, and the telephone rang all the time. Fun. My cellphone ran out of battery and the parentals brought my charger home since they thought it was their charger. This whole thing felt like being dumped in the Wonderland, but a silent and solitary type of Wonderland.

If I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. Honestly, I'm more amused than any other emotion. I was reminded of being a high school student and alone in a house in a middle of a farm with a lone wooden bridge connecting it to the town that was in the middle of other small towns up north continents away from where I am now. I had no internet, no functioning computer, no telephone, barely a flicker of a cellphone signal, and barely a signal from the TV's satellite dish. I called it the Land of Nothingness. And it was fun. I could be alone with my books with no one to bother me whether I did the dishes or cooked a full meal.

I survived that and I'm surviving this because I find it fun to figure out ways to be resourceful, and in getting lost when I take walks, and figuring out how much weight I can carry when I walk back from the grocery store, and enjoying how much better cook I am, and how much obsessive I can be when I clean, and how vigilant I can be against spiders (HATE THEM), and ants (Admire them from outside the house), and just learning how to be okay with just being with myself again. I'm finding that I've grown so much more compared to when I was a high schooler, and that makes me smile. I hope five years from now, I can look back and still smile at the fact that I've grown wiser and better than when I was twenty-one.

Resolutions. Mine involve cheese.

So, it's 2010. I can't believe it, another year has flown by so quickly. For 2009, I am thankful for:

+ Finishing my prereqs for Nursing

+ Getting in the uni's nursing program

+ Learning how to let go

+ Traveling to Canada and being with my sister

+ Staying healthy (mostly) and not missing any classes

+ Being able to donate my hair for a good cause

+ Getting the chance to see my brother mature

+ Being blessed to meet the loved ones I have lost

+ Getting my art back again

+ Oh, and a bookshelf

The funniest moment, or one of the many, was the semester I was taking five (or six) classes. It wasn't funny then but it is now. The silliest moment involved my mom, my dad, and myself rearranging furniture. I swear there out to be a joke about it (wait, I think there is one). The craziest moment involved all the times at the end of the semesters, oh and that particular one where I fell asleep, was not woken up by my alarm clocks, and was not able to study for a test. Good job. The saddest moment was when I forgot what I was doing my best for. The sweetest moment was when my friends from my study group surprised me on my birthday with lemon poppy seed bread during our study session. Thanks guys. The weirdest moment involved my first day of clinical and a guy who had no nose. The day I felt loved was the day my mom told me she was blessed to have me as her daughter. The day that I forgave was the day I really laughed with my brother after a long time. The day I felt vulnerable was the day I said that I wasn't ready and wouldn't be for a long time. The day I felt small was the day I remembered that I was not without God. The day I was humbled was the day my dad and I worked to replant a tree swept down by the wind that was taller than us. The day that I loved was the day I prayed for my grandmother even as she made my mom cry.

This year I plan to read the books I bought last year that I haven't had the chance to enjoy, draw and paint more and acquaint myself with the tablet I got from princess, and drink milk (or soymilk since I'm slightly lactose intolerant like that) or eat cheese (I need calcium like a lot), and to write more letters, and to discipline my body to get normal sleep-and-wake patterns (I am not a zombie or a robot), and cook more Filipino dishes cos I know there's more delicious ones that I haven't tried yet.

Remember what I wrote during the beginning of last year? No? Yeah, me neither. What I wrote was: You can't get everything right, but you can't get everything wrong either. So I wrote that again to remind myself, because I forgot that last year and I was miserable. My dad's name means 'always victorious', and he told me that my name means 'never a loser' because I am also his junior. Next time I will remember this and know that even if I don't get everything right, I'm going to be alright as long as I don't give up.

Exactly who was it that said this wasn't going to be awkward again?

Warning: This post is bound to have abuse of adjectives and conjunctions, inaccurate use of metaphors, and improper use of tenses.

So. In case there're people who are like me that haven't noticed, it's December now. Yes, quite. Last time I checked I was still with my buddy angst as we whined about the variable called time and my fair weather friend called life while I slept in bed with half my textbooks buried with me. Now that I have resurfaced from this thing called school and have again been participating in the things called holidays and good cheer, please to be letting me be show you my existence this past months in fast forward.

So. It all started out jolly and well, and well, it all went to pieces. But that's fine because I enjoyed my clinicals and met a bunch of 'older adults' as we say them, as I went bumbling around in the hospitals like a non-bull in a tea shop* while I figured out how to actually use bed sheets and pillow cases on actual beds, fumbled through head-to-toe assessments, asked awkward personal questions about people's dental hygiene and bowel movements, managed not to manhandle clients as I gave bed baths, deciphered the language of scribbles adapted by healthcare providers, mentally talked myself through as I gave clients there daily medications, wore my purple scrubs, lived through being called adorable, and ultimately laughed at myself literally and figuratively as I ungracefully toddled through these eight weeks. All in all, if you're looking for awkwardness, why, I believe that there's no need to look further as I am at your service.

I've just had five exams this week and I'm supposed to be typing (I feel like that's just what I've been doing these past months. Seriously. Ugh.) my portfolio. I just wanted to say that I am done with this semester. Woohoo. :D So I have a ten-day break which I will spend catching up on sleep, my reading, watching movies and TV, and preparing for my next class which is on January 4th. And if you're wondering, yes, I will be doing it on that order, exactly that order.

I'm actually wrapping gifts right now too. Okay, I've only done one yet but I will manage to wrap all of them. Maybe.

Obviously, I am in dazed state of mind again. So. Let's just end this with more Christmas-y pictures. One more at least.


Have a bright and cheery Christmas!
_
*There's a misconception or overly used metaphor that when you put a bull in a tea shop, they will wreck the fine china and all that, but in reality, bulls, like any sane creature, would actually not break the china and the tea sets since they would avoid colliding with the cabinets or whatever the china is stored on. So, no, bulls aren't masochistic creatures that destroy china/tea shops.