AnnieModify

Today I turn 45 which is, if you think about it, half of 90! And also about 30 years older than I feel on the inside! What is age? What is time? What is reality? I certainly don’t know.

Current situation: 

Monday 22 June: Study anatomy! Work! Lily to therapy! Go to the gym! Eat dinner! Study some more! Fall into bed thinking about tissues and bones!

Tuesday 23 June: Hospital day 🏥 💛 Got to see a double fasciotomy (helped with the dressing change) which was fascinating. Got yelled at, cursed at, and called a sweet angel (all by the same patient). 🤷‍♀️

Wednesday 24 June: Work! Call with new boss! (It went fine!) Memorize more bones! Go to the gym! DID YOU KNOW LIFTING WEIGHTS MAKES YOUR ACTUAL BONES PRODUCE MORE BONE CELLS SO THEY ARE DENSER AND STRONGER AND YOU ARE MORE FLEXIBLE AND RESILIENT? You won’t get taller but you will get stronger! So get your osteocytes working, friends! Pick up heavy things and put them down again! Do it over and over on a semi-regular basis! 

Thursday 25 June: Work! Big team call with new boss! (Also went fine!) Bones bones bones bones bones bones bones bones bones. Gym! Lift heavy things. Walk on the treadmill while watching YT videos about bones! 

Friday 26 June: Work! Bones! Took Lily for her permit test! She passed! More bones! Gym! Bones! Dinner! Bones! Bed! 

Saturday 27 June: Hospital day 🏥 💛 Long day. Got home late. Kids all in various places. Quiet. Showered, looked at the anatomy study pile on the table, and went straight to bed. 

Sunday 28 June: Feeling amazing after 9 hours of sleep, wow. I should do that more often. 

🥾 Hiking church with Jenn. 💜 It was hot. Hello, summer hiking in Missouri. 

Lunch with Katie. 💜

Mara in town for birthday time. ALL MY BABIES AROUND ME AT ALL TIMES IS ALL I AM ASKING FOR OKAY. Also 9 hours of sleep every night. 💜 Cards and flowers and treats all day. They wrapped my gifts in a giant ball of bubble wrap and packing tape. 😂 We did an escape room which we escaped with 26 seconds on the clock. Then breakfast-dinner at Denny’s. Dumb jokes, snort-laughing, plans for world domination. 

Came home and studied bones until I fell asleep at the table. Took myself to bed. 

Monday 29 June: Slept 9 hours again. I can conquer the world or at the very least memorize a lot of bone fissures. 

Work, gym, and study today. Steak salad for dinner sounds good. 

Anatomy test on Thursday, at which point I can stop thinking about bones and start thinking about muscles. 

Later this week, time with Holly and dinner with Linds. 💜 

Took Friday 3rd off work and don’t have hospital shifts, so I have a long luxurious weekend ahead. 

I’m here for the poetry. For 45 lucky, lucky years, this collection of minutes and hours and days stacked up and sliding around, I’ve been here. I get to be here. I get to keep being here for some minutes and hours and days more. 

I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space.

— James Joyce

I have to publish this now, we’re already halfway through W26.

Current situation:

Monday 08 June: The U of Ark college visit. Zeke really likes it and they have a great engineering program. It poured down rain all morning. I bought umbrellas in the gift shop. I am bad at selfies. 

Tuesday 09 June: Coffee with a friend I’ve known since middle school. “Are we turning 45 this year?” Turns out, yes. 

We all begin as a bundle of bones lost somewhere in a desert, a dismantled skeleton that lies under the sand. It is our work to recover the parts.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wednesday 10 June: After work, Lily and I tackled the overly complicated bed assembly which involved

1. One trip to the hardware store for missing bolts

2. One order of Chinese takeout

3. A lot of squinting at fuzzy tiny diagrams in the optimistically vague instructions 

4. Swearing 

5. Much laughter 

6. Six (6!) hours of KPop.

So far the bed has not fallen apart. 

Friday 12 June: Early morning work call. I’m gonna drink a gallon of coffee today. Who am I kidding, I drink a gallon of coffee everyday. The weather is still cooler than usual. I like it. 

Monday 15 June: The weekend was a  blur with hospital shifts on Saturday and Sunday. Beautiful weather. Took a looooong walk to make up for missing my usual weekend hike. 

Tuesday 16 June: First deadlines for the summer term: anatomy & physiology 1 and a communications class. A&P in 8 weeks might have been a mistake. Did okay on the first exam but it just covered tissues. Next up is ALL THE BONES. 

Fortunately the communications class is just a lot of writing and open-book quizzes. 😅

Wednesday 17 June: To the library for a “We get dumb shit done” session. Here’s how it works: You text a friend. You choose a time. You reserve a study room. You bring your laptops. You sit there together in the study room and do dumb life-admin shit like filling out forms, making appointments, canceling subscriptions, whatever. You make fun of everything and complain to each other the entire time. After a couple of hours you get a surprising amount done. 

Saturday 20 June: My first Saturday off in…. a while. Other than a minor unavoidable study session, I successfully avoided being productive and spent the day lounging, reading, snacking, and hanging with the girls. Perfection. 

Sunday 21 June: 🥾 Hiking church. Warm but pleasant. 

Sunday afternoon, a huge storm rolled through and it rained for a long time. So cozy. 

Some other stuff happened, probably. I can’t remember at the moment. It’s not important. I need to go memorize the skeletal system now.  🩻

Gentle

A gentler world begins
in the way you touch your heart.
Be soft with the light inside you.
Caress your body with this breath.
God is nothing else
but the place where the sun comes up
in your chest.
You are the glimmering destination.
You are the golden honey daubed
on the bread of the ordinary.
Whatever is perfect,
whatever is heavenly,
begins here.

— Fred LaMotte

Do not bargain to be loved. 

Do not negotiate. 

When love is withheld as a punishment, as a manipulation, as a means to move you in a certain direction: Do the worst and most difficult thing and quit asking for it. Withdraw your hand, put it in your pocket. Clamp your mouth shut, let your silence swell, do not ask for explanations.

It's already been explained. 

Love is not contractual. Love does not have terms you must fulfill before you get to have it. 

Love exists and is made apparent in all situations where it is present. 

If it is not apparent — if you cannot feel it, hear it, and see it in action — it is not present. 

This seems like a harsh rule but it is the only rule of love. 

 Love is not confusing. Love is clear. Love is simple. Love is obvious. Big as the sky, sturdy as a mountain. Brave and honest, tender and unrelenting. 

 You don't have to poke around in dark corners asking, Is it here? Is it here? 

 You don't have to dig for love until your fingers bleed. You don't have take apart some sharp-edged thing to get at the gooey love-filled center. 

Love doesn't hide. Love appears and stays. Love is present. 

 When you're loved, you know it. You feel it. It opens you up. It blesses you with spaciousness and closeness, with freedom and safety, equal measures. You don't have to choose one and lose the other. Love does not offer you a half. Love is the whole. 

Do not bargain to be loved. 

Here are some things that are not love:

• Affection

• Agreement

• Attention

• Attraction

• Compliments

• Apologies

• Gifts

• Sex 

Love may express itself in those ways. Love may give you affection, attention, all of the above. Wonderful. 

Love can bring you these things, but it does not hold a monopoly. 

Agreement can come from avoidance of conflict.
Attention can come from jealousy.
Affection can come from loneliness.
Compliments can come from a need to please.
Gifts can come from guilt. 

Love is not transactional. Love is not a handful of coins in your pocket, spend one here, spend one there, save some up for a rainy day. 

Love does not run out. Love is self-created, self-fulfilling, endless supply.  

Love is active generosity. Love is splendid, exorbitant kindness. Love cannot be measured or doled out in small bits, cut into smaller slices. 

When someone tries to love you this way, here is the explanation (take a deep breath): 

What they offer you is not love. 

They offer you something, to be sure. But it is not love. 

If love is what you want, don't bargain for what is not love. 

Some people want to love but don't know how. Or they want to get love, but don't know how to give it. 

You don't teach them by accepting not-love and pretending it is love. 

You can show them by knowing what love is and being it, best as you can: Being clear, being simple, being obvious.  

Not accepting half-truths or hiding. Not equating affection with love, apologies with love, attention with love. Not being pulled into transactions. Not being backed into a corner. Not making yourself smaller. Not agreeing when you don't agree. Not tolerating what you shouldn't tolerate. 

Clear, simple, obvious. Big and sturdy. Brave and honest, tender and unrelenting. 

Even when saying goodbye. 

As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.

― Bessel A. van der Kolk

What we live through, what we experience, how we navigate a life that is one unknown after another, how we keep breathing in the midst of pain, how we learn to carry suffering, how we open our arms to each other, how we offer comfort in the face of tragedy: none of it really makes sense.

How we look forward with hope, how we keep functioning without hope, what we do when it feels like there’s nothing to hope for, when meaning is lost, when it would feel nice to have the earth open and swallow us whole…

How we find small things to delight in, how we notice a good thing in the middle of a shitstorm, how we put our heads down and plod forward through despair, how we tilt our faces toward the sun, how we park the car and get out and shut the door and check the mail and walk inside when our minds can’t imagine why we’re doing any of it and our hearts are howling, screaming, shattering…

How we make art, how certain things become sharper, how we accept one another’s discomfort, how we make room for each other’s pain, how we read a poem or a comic or watch a show or stare out the window, how one story might pull us under but another story might be what saves us…

Bukowski said, What matters most is how well you walk through the fire, and what we didn’t realize is that it’s all fire, all the time, and how we walk through it is how we live, how we keep living, because love is a fire, love is as strong as death which means sometimes, a lot of times, we live through things that seem likely to kill us.

The mystery is you and how you are here, right now, slamming your hand in frustration, yelling, cursing, sobbing, retreating into silence, considering violence, burdened with helplessness, pacing and exhausted, uncertain and trembling, numb with detachment, shaking with anger, frozen in shock, shaking with grief, panicking, breathless.

It’s extraordinary — the way you breathe, the way you keep breathing. The way you question yourself, the way you smile, the way you let tears roll down your face, how you peer through the flames to see colors and light.

A week in which some things happen and some things do not happen, much like other weeks. 

Current situation:

The pain of having children who become driving teenagers is the exorbitant cost of auto insurance. The joy is getting to stare out the window as the midwestern landscape moves by and think about nothing and everything for hours at a time. 

Monday 01 June: Dentist in the morning, then work. I make all the kids’ appointments for the same day, which was a logistical requirement for years and now is just a solid tradition. We all troop in and the receptionist says, “Ahhh, the Muellers are here.” I guess at some point my adult-ish children will start doing their own dentist thing but we haven’t crossed that line yet. I’m not rushing it. 

Tuesday 02 June: My Mom died 19 years ago. I miss her every single day. 

Wednesday 03 June: Certainly some things happened on this day. But memorable things did not happen, I guess. 

How often we made our worst fears come true, by behaving as though they already were.

— Louise Penny, A Better Man

Thursday 04 June: Early work meeting, then met a friend for a walk. Work, gym, then I spent a lot of money on Amazon¹. Now that we’re down to two kids at home (🥺) each with their own! separate! bedroom!, they no longer have to tolerate twin-size creaky metal loft beds. So: I ordered bed frames and mattresses. Which means next week we’ll have to put together the bed frames…. 

Friday 05 June: Took a long leisurely walk at the end of the day. Refused to cook dinner due to the volume of leftovers in the fridge. Saw some pretty peonies. Snuggled up on the couch and read Louise Penny while Lily watched Wednesday again. 

Saturday 06 June: Hospital day. Floor wasn’t full and then we had multiple discharges so I ended up with only 5 patients. I actually sat down for probably 2-3 hours total. Home. Shower. Balcony time. Stayed up too late watching Slow Horses. 

Sunday 07 June: An absolute luxury of a morning. No alarms. Slept until I woke up, then coffee and slow soft waking time. Then unhurried gym time: Weights, run, sauna. I’m not sure when I became a person who finds a 2 hour gym session luxurious but apparently that’s who I am now.

At this precise moment Zeke and I are about 60 miles from Bentonville, Arkansas, where my sister lives. Tomorrow we’ll do  a college tour at U of A in Fayetteville, then drive home. 

📚 Read A Better Man by Louise Penny. Also FINALLY returned the stack of horrifically overdue library books. SORRY I’M SO SORRY. 

📺 Started rewatching season 4 of Slow Horses because I realized I never watched season 5! But then I didn’t remember what happened in season 4 so I’m watching it again before I watch season 5. 

🩻 I’m starting Anatomy & Physiology 1 class tomorrow so that’s probably all I’m gonna be able to think or talk about for the next 8 weeks. BONES! MUSCLES! ORGANS! ALSO TISSUES! 

💪 3x weight training. I moved up to 40lb dumbbells on bulgarian split squats. I like to start every workout with some split squats because then you know you’ve already done the worst possible thing. 

👟 2 runs and hit over 12k steps every day.

🐈‍⬛ 1x Goobie took over my journal.

1. I know Amazon is the devil. Don’t @ me.

Sunday came, Sunday went, but the notes can be week notes any day they want to be. 

Current situation:

Monday 25 May: Memorial Day, also hospital day. Having to work certain holidays is a new thing for me. 

The long light days of summer begin. Last night it was light until well after 8. Pool is open now. Hasn’t been very warm yet but that will change quickly. We’re a week away from June.  

Tuesday 26 May: Thinking about the cost of optimizing: The more you optimize, the more difficult it is to be flexible. A danger of losing resilience.

There’s an underlying principle at work here. Stress creates resilience.

— Scott Hogan, Built from Broken

On the other hand:

A nervous system that is constantly in sympathetic mode cannot hold complexity. 

— Nate Hagens, A Framework for Action (YouTube link)

Wednesday 27 May: Back to runnnning. I did a Couch ➡︎ 5K program over March and April, ended in early May. Took a few weeks off. Wasn’t sure how I’d do today but all the muscles seem to remember what to do. Now I’m pleasantly tired, my legs are sore, and I feel amazing. I kind of wish running didn’t feel so good because it’s also so goddamn awful. 

Got Rob all moved out today. 😭 It’s fine, it’s good, he’s ready, it’s great, it’s time, blah blah blah blah blah I hate it. He’s still in town, at least. 

Thursday 28 May: One of those days where there are too many things. We gotta quit with all the things. So many things. One thing then another thing. LET ME NAP.

The linden trees are blooming and they smell amazing. Also the magnolias. 

After everything, the wild went on. Of course it did.

— Moonbound, Robin Sloan

Friday 29 May: You know you are genuinely in old-person territory when sleeping till 7 feels late. Also, impossible to sleep past 7. My back has a strict time limit on when it must no longer be on a mattress. I find this upsetting and unfair.   

💜 Mara here for the weekend! 

Saturday 30 May: Hospital day. I have GOT to get better about having some sort of dinner mostly prepped on hospital days because otherwise I come home and just eat whatever I can grab like a starved maniac. Gremlin mode activates. I just stood in the kitchen shoveling stale old potato chips in my mouth for… I don’t know how long. Let’s not talk about this anymore. 

Sunday 31 May: Hiking church. Very muddy after all the rain. Delightful water sounds everywhere. 

Spontaneous tattoo time, thanks to Mara who had her tattoo stuff with her and  just casually freehand drew this design on my wrist from a couple of inspo pics I found. It’s a blackberry vine with a few tiny skulls. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

📚 Finished Moonbound by Robin Sloan. Excellent. I loved it. Cozy but in the way I want cozy to be when I try to read a cozy genre book and am inevitably disappointed (bored?). This book has the feeling I’m actually after. 

…. other things happened like I remember going to the gym at least twice? OH WAIT FUCK YEAH I PR’D BENCHPRESS BABY!! 115 POUNDS.  

That was satisfying. 

I want to write more about that Nate Hagens video which I have not finished watching but which is really good but I am too tired. 

To sum up: A week (or so) has passed, I was alive, I did things or did not do things, here we are, me and the adorable tiny skulls are ready for sleep now.