Happy 4th of July weekend!

This is my first iphone picture! I am having fun, though I should probably be studying! As part of our anniversary celebration, we upgraded Matthews iphone to the 3GS and I nabbed the original so now we are a fully fledged iphone family! I am amazed at everything that thing can do!

On our actual anniversary we are both going to be home late and I will smell like formaldehyde from a full day of dissecting, so we made yesterday kind of an unofficial celebration. Matthews parents sent us a pizza stone to fire grill pizza so we gave that a try yesterday, it was a lot of fun and very yummy. Matthew went to a local wine shop that we had never been to before and received some really wonderful advice on wines. If anyones a Riesling drinker out there, let me know and I will send you the name of what we tried. Even Matthew loved it and he is not a huge Riesling fan! We also had a Chianti and some other Red, and another bottle we didn't open....so we have A LOT of left over wine! We has the Riesling before dinner, the Chianti with the pizza and the other red with dessert (we were saving the Godiva gift card from the Pleasants for a special occasion and used it yesterday, thanks guys! It's great!) So we spent the day cooking pizza and drinking wine, watched some baseball some movies, it was a fun day :)

Now, unfortunately, it is time to hit the books again. Since it was a 3 day weekend I decided I could take one day completely off, and it was wonderful :) I'm suprised how hard it is to motivate myself to work after just one day of freedom! Only 6 more weeks of this semester, then a nice little vacation :) I still essentially have two years left, but somehow I already feel I'm on the home stretch...maybe it's the perception my mind has created to keep me from going crazy :)

Missing Becka

I haven't blogged for ages so decided it's time. I have a huge endocrine test tomorrow followed by a neuro test on Wednesday. There aren't enough hours in the day to be prepared for them both. And then part of me just doesn't care, because there is somewhere else I want to be. I want to be home with my family and with my Poppa, I want to do something. I want to feel at peace with what's happened and some kind of closure, but instead I just feel a big, open, unresolved sadness that I can't overcome. My visit home in May will help I'm sure. It's hard when people who weren't close to their grandparents don't understand how hard it is for those of us who are. I told one of my friends and they said "oh, I"m sorry" and then moved on and that was that, like it was no big deal. I didn't tell anybody at school, which I don't know if it makes it harder or easier, trying to pretend like everything is fine. Then I don't feel like I should be so upset: I'm fortunate to have been so close to her, she was suffering and ready to go, it's selfish of me to be trying to hold on so tight. I just wish I could have seen her one more time and said goodbye, but I need to stop dwelling on that wish, because I can't change it. I just need to go home and say an official goodbye, and let it all out.
In other news....well, there's not much. I think we have about 6 weeks left of school, then Matthew and I are off to L.A. for Christopher's graduation, then we or I will head out to Spokane for a few days, then I will be a second year PT student! Annabelle should be here any day now, so that will brighten the world a little bit :)

Clinical

I just finished my first week in the clinic and I am exhausted! There was more variety than I had expected. The first day my Clinical Instructor was still on vacation so I worked with another therapist and 75% of the patients were at approximately 6 weeks post-op rotator cuff repair so that was boring and I was a little pessimistic. Once my CI returned on Tuesday I started seeing a lot more variety and it was really interesting. She is great and still remembers what it is like to be a student. I feel like I understand everything that is going on, even if I wouldn't have known to do it since I have learned it yet. Things are beginning to come together and I'm really excited to start doing more hands-on stuff in the coming weeks.

Tomorrow I have to get up early and do some screenings at a rec center through the clinic I am at, but then I can hopefully RELAX! I didn't sleep well the whole time we were in Washington, and since we didn't have a day home before going into it I am incredibly exhausted. So far I have been doing a bit of studying to review things as they come up in the clinic and that has been really helpful because I have definitely forgotten some details! It's surprising to me how much nerve pathways have come into play so far in outpatient ortho, it is pretty exciting. This clinic is apparently more diverse than is typic, so that is wonderful because a typical environment would most likely bore me.

We only got to spend a couple days with Mandi and Mike which was sad, it was really hard to leave. I got to spend some quality time with Lysha making jingle balls and that was nice :) The family all seemed to be doing well, but for some reason the trip still exhausted me! It is good to be home and see Seagram. He was really happy to see us and has been really cuddly all week :)

There should be something more entertaining to share since I haven't blogged in so long, but....there is not :) Maybe on day I will learn not to ramble when I blog.... ;)