people watching

i learned recently that an acceptable plural form of the word cello is celli. yeah, who knew?

i went to the symphony a little bit ago. i love that at the U, feeling cultured is free with every student id. 

now, i'm particularly adept at people watching. i quickly found the three most interesting people in the symphony. it's amazing how much you can learn about somebody just by watching them play their instrument.

so person #1. unorthodox bassist. you know how you're supposed to hold the bow a certain way? well, this guy held it the OPPOSITE WAY. i mean, he still used his right hand, but instead of the back of his hand facing front, the back of his hand faced backwards. what? i have never seen that.

person #2: the oldest living violinist. seriously, this man was probably 95 years old. his hair was pure white and he was in that shrunken state so that even when he was sitting up tall, he was probably one head shorter than everyone else. oh man, he was just so cute. 

person #3. i saved the best for last. he was the principal 2nd violinist. man, his face was priceless! if i was the conductor, i would have been watching this guy's face the whole entire time. it would be so distracting! he was so emotionally in tune with the music. on his long notes, he literally would close his eyes, look up, and sway. it looked like he was meditating. kind of. when the song picked up he would eye those notes down and he would get them. there was no escape for those notes. there is no way to explain the method to this form of genius, but it was awesome. totally made the whole concert for me. 

alright, so what lessons did i gather from symphonic people watching?

find something that you love and do it! find something that you want to do until you're 95 and old and shriveled! don't apologize for doing something differently. if you love it, that's all that's important. go out there and do it. don't do things half-heartedly. 

when you pray, pray.

when you study, study.

when you're in something, be in it.

if you're someone's friend, be their friend.

when you play the violin, play that violin.

play that bass with your hand backwards. 

find what you're passionate about and do it. 

i think everyone will be much happier when that happens. 

mientras tanto, soy feliz

pre job interview job interviews? weird. whatever.

the perfect snowglobe of a winter wonderland that i woke up to at 5am? magical.

the cutest old man wearing uggs with his pants tucked in at the hospital? adorable.

speaking spanish and conversar-ing with spanish-only patients and family? takes me back to the good old days. and reminds me that i need to learn medical spanish. 

the best institute class ever with the best teacher who literally changes your life just a little bit every single lesson? mind-blowing.

the upcoming pathophysiology test i have? oh shoot.

my life? magical, wonderful, awesome. i love it. 

there are very few things that bring my family as much joy as neil diamond's christmas album. i don't even know how it happened, but somehow this became the first album we would listen to on the day after thanksgiving while we were putting up the christmas tree. always. 

 my little missionary brother specifically mentioned in an email that he was celebrating the fourth of july by listening to neil diamond's christmas album (he's a good boy and wouldn't have a regular album). he said he couldn't think of anything more american than neil. 

also a few months ago my little missionary brother wrote me in response to a few things i was complaining about and he said and i quote "when life gets hard to handle, Neil." wow, as i was typing that out just now, i just got the double meaning. oh, carson, you are witty. how did i miss that before?

i busted out his christmas album today in honor of the first snow. 'tis the season! 

anyway, let us pay homage to the man who defines americanism and without whom, the christmas season just wouldn't be complete.

where'd his face go?

so there's this episode of grey's anatomy where this little boy is really scared to go into surgery because he doesn't know what's going to go on. one of the doctors (george o'malley) asks for special permission to be able to take this little boy into an OR to see a surgery. it's supposed to be a really easy, clean surgery. a laparoscopic appy or something like that. something where he wouldn't actually see anything.

anyway, george accidentally takes the little boy into the wrong OR and the little boy sees what i got to see recently during my clinical nursing rotation through the OR.

what is it that this little boy and i saw?? well, take a little look for yourself. if you just can't wait, scroll ahead through the youtube video to around 1:00.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeekk!!!!!!

yeah, that's right. i got to see the process of surgeons taking someone's face off. while it wasn't exactly what it looks like in grey's, it's the same general idea. they just incise up and around from ear to ear and then start working away at pulling down. i got to see about 5 hours of this. when i left, they still weren't done! they were still working around the eyes! 

isn't that truly amazing? seriously! how in the heck did someone ever figure out that you could peel someone's face off and then put it back on. and who in the heck was the first person who consented to allow doctors to do that? 

i wonder sometimes if we sometimes go too far in medicine and take on a god-like role in preserving life when naturally, life shouldn't exist. that in itself is a topic for another day. it's just amazing how many things we can do and how many things we've been able to figure out about the human body. 

i'm so happy i'm doing what i'm doing now. i love it!

meet the new roommates.

We had a ward gathering at my apartment recently. I was in charge of introducing myself and my two other roommates. Oh boy, it was fun. It was intro a la statistics style. For your pleasure...

between us 3, we have had 74 roommates. 

we've lived in 20 different apartments, 7 different states.

we have 3 bachelor's degrees from BYU and are all now enrolled at U of U.

we took 442 credits and 26 religion classes total at BYU.

collectively, we have been playing the piano for 45 years!! whaaat??

we've served 3 missions, to 2 countries (canada and paraguay)

combined, we've had 39 companions and served in 16 different areas.

we've had 24 different callings since we started college.

we've done ordinances in 20 different temples.

we've visited 4 different continents and 15 countries.

we own 31 scarves, 84 pairs of shoes, and 62 tubes of chapstick/lipgloss/lipstick - 45 of which are owned by one person -- take a wild guess. yup, that'd be me.

just 2 broken bones - both pinkie bones.

3 surgeries - 1 each.

we've run 2 5Ks, 1 10 mile race, 4 half marathons, and 1 ragnar. actually, that was all 1 person. there's only 1 runner in the house.

together we've had 7 boyfriends ranging from semi-serious to pretty dang serious.

we've kissed 18 boys. 2 of us actually kissed the same boy, back before we even knew each other. small world, right??

i love my living situation right now. i'm so lucky to be with such great friends. it's a riot every single night!

why i've been AWOL

i do like blogging. i really do. i like writing. i do!

i found out i liked writing on the mission. weird, right? not poetry or novels or anything like that. this kind of writing. bloggy-type writing. i got to do it every week with my email home on the mission. i had a captive audience and pretty much the best material anyone could ask for. paraguay and the mission provided for some pretty entertaining stories. turns out my real life right now provides for some pretty entertaining stories too. 

so why have i been AWOL for like the past million years? what has happened since my last post that was like back in FEBRUARY? 

i graduated from byu. (yaay!!)

vacayed in AR for 2.5 weeks.

started nursing school at u of u.

had the busiest summer semester imaginable.

almost died taking my pharmacology class. that class was a beast.

3 hours commuting every day. yikes. made for good study time though.

tried to maintain a fun social life for my last little bit in provo. summer in provo is just too fun.

i invested a lot of emotion dating a boy who told me he loved me. it didn't work out but that's for the best.

oh and i moved to salt lake. 

so needless to say, i've had a few things on my plate. but now things are a lot calmer. my semester is much more mellow. no 3 hours every day of commuting. no staying up way too late and waking up way too early. no more pharmacology (that in itself makes everything calmer). and i found myself missing writing. 

it's not the great american novel or anything like that. if anything, it's just the weird, jumbled ramblings of my random mind. but it helps me feel good. 

on body image

i'm taking a women's health class this semester and for our first assignment we had to do five interviews of different women across the age span, analyze differences and similarities and then write about what body image means to us. this was extremely interesting to me because my ideas about body image and body self confidence have changed radically since i was 14. literally, 180 degrees different. 

it reminded me how rough it is to be growing up and having distorted views about what the body should look like. 

i just thought i'd include some of what i wrote in my reflection paper. i kind of changed it a little bit to make it a little more bloggy-like.

I used to be extremely critical of how I looked, what I weighed, and the size I could fit into. I remember going into high school at 5’6”, 110 pounds. People thought I looked anorexic and asked if I was. Of course I wasn’t, my weight just hadn’t caught up with me yet. My junior year I finally started gaining some weight. I shot up to 123 pounds and I got stretch marks on my legs from gaining that weight, even though I still only weighed 123 pounds. I was a dancer and was very lean and toned, but still I was devastated. I felt so fat. Of course it didn't help that I was in front of studio mirrors every day in a leotard and tights. I couldn’t fit into my favorite size 3 jeans anymore. I remember thinking that if I ever passed 125 pounds, I would have slipped out of control and I wouldn't be a good dancer anymore. During this time I tried to completely shut out junk food and sugar. Of course it didn't work. I didn't quite understand moderation back then either. It was either eat really well or be a total failure and eat all the food. I tried so hard to make sure I never passed 123. Granted, I still was so thankful for my body and for the abilities I had to dance. (Although I still curse my inflexible hips and hip flexors to this day...)

And yet my weight kept slowly creeping up (And yet somehow it never crossed my mind that it might be muscle mass! My senior year I started running regularly and I was dancing more than ever. I swear my calf muscles could have cut somebody). My weight seemed to balance out and I weighed between 125-130 as I started college. Thankfully, I didn’t gain the typical freshman fifteen, and even lost weight (due to a lengthy battle with mononucleosis).

My perception of body image has completely changed in the past few years. After years of eating to not gain any weight and years of trying to maintain that perfect dancer's body, I now eat to be healthy. I feel healthier now than I ever have back when I would diet and restrict myself from certain types of foods. I have a healthy relationship with food and love eating. And I eat often. 

Now I really see and appreciate my body for what it is. I exercise because I like the feeling of my body moving. I eat foods that make me feel good. Healthy foods make me happy. Junk makes me feel like junk. I'm very strongly anti-diet (my entire senior research paper last semester was about how diets are ineffective and largely detrimental to health). 

Yeah, so I may not wear a size 3 anymore. And yeah, I might have gotten stretch marks on my inner thighs just by hitting 120 pounds in high school. I might have varicose veins in my legs from walking so much every day on my 18-month mission. And hey, I may not weigh what it says on my driver's license anymore (I think it says 125. Close, but still off).

But you know what my body has done? 

It's taken me hundreds of miles on runs. It's helped me train for three half marathons, a 10-mile race, and a few 5Ks. 

It helped me dance for ten years. Literally, probably thousands of hours of dancing. 

It helped me make it through the experience of living in Paraguay for a year and a half. Seriously, that deserves a round of applause.

My notions about health have all changed. Part of it is due to the number of nutrition classes I've taken at BYU. There's nothing quite like the relationship between your body and what you eat to fuel it. It's amazing what the body can do for us.

so, here's the question: what has your body done for you?