March: In Like A Buffalo

It's snowing. Again. Polar vortex, you and I need to have a serious discussion. I'm in a ranting sort of mood.

I am postponing my 40 miler until tomorrow, which will give me a chance to finish working on my presentation for next Wednesday. Plus the fact that I woke up to 16 degrees and a slick layer of ice on everything. Again. Tomorrow promises to be somewhat better, a little warmer and no snow, so I'm waiting.

This was an all-around weird week! The earth must have been slightly off it's orbit around the sun, or the moon was doing something weird. I felt off, in every way.

Every afternoon this week I needed a 2 or 3 hour nap. That's after sleeping at least 8 hours. I haven't even been running much, I averaged roughly 6 miles each day this week, saving it up for my long run. I ran the same route all week, too, and finally the lake is almost free of ice except for in this one corner.

Each day this week, it smelled like spring. The birds were singing in the morning. The snow was melting. Some little green tulip leaves were popping up out of the ground in the back yard.

Wednesday I gave into an ice cream craving after 2 months without the nasty stuff. It probably has been my favorite food forever, at least up there among the top 3 with sushi and green chile. But this time I noticed I felt horrible the day after eating it. Thursday I woke up hungry, had no energy all day. It was the sugar and I think I am done with sugar. I've had so much more energy since I quit eating crap at the beginning of January.

I could not understand why I was craving carbs so badly. Last week I did bump up my mileage, but I ate plenty. So then I got my answer, sorry for the TMI but this is how it is. After not having a menstrual period for 5 months, I thought I was done. I had my physical with the doctor last week and told her that, and we were talking about how I'm probably done. You are considered to be officially in menopause when you have not had a period for one year. So I was really hoping another 7 months would go by undisturbed.

Well as of this week, I got to start over with that year. Sucks! I am so ready for this to be done. I really hope this is the last one. At least it wasn't triggered by a race, like it has been for the past few years. But it would explain my general state of irritability, impatience, and carbohydrate cravings, not to mention the state of my face which broke out randomly about a week ago. I became the RPB again. Dammit.

Then Friday I took my Cancer Exercise Trainer exam. I passed, so now I have that certification and I am finally done with the studying part and can move forward in my business.

Consistent with the earth being off it's orbit, I had a briefly gut-wrenching experience. I went out to Greeley to take the test at Aims Community College, and I sat through the exam, which was much easier than I expected. I got done in an hour and 15 minutes and they allow you 3 hours.

I've taken a lot of these computer exams lately so I sort of know the drill, you finish the exam and submit it, and a little window pops up on the screen that asks, "Are you sure?" and you click yes. And then another little window pops up again and asks, "Are you sure?" and you wish there was a "yes, dammit" button, but you click yes.

And then you wait as it thinks for a while, and then it displays the results on the screen. I passed. It showed my score and how I did on the different sections of the exam. Sometimes they'll have a little survey at the end that they want you to complete. So I sat there and waited while the computer did it's mind crunching thing, and it took a long time. L-O-N-G time. Suddenly this little box came up on the screen that said, "Critical error. Contact test administrator".

Eeek!

So I went out of the room to find the people at the front desk, and they couldn't find my score report. I was thinking, oh shit, they lost it, what if I'll have to do this all over again! But the guy called the test company, and after waiting on the phone for a good ten minutes, he finally got connected to someone. Who then put him on hold and transferred him to another geek, with another forever wait.

Finally they walked him through whatever he needed to do and they recovered my data and I got my score report and I was done. Whew!

It's been this hurdle sitting there ahead of me, so one more thing checked off the list. Now I can concentrate on the good stuff, the marketing, contacting physicians, and the last bits of paperwork and legal stuff before I can really move forward. There's a lot to do, but I want to do it right, and I'm not going to rush through it.

I've been trying not to multitask. It feels great to focus on one thing at a time. I will eventually get back to some multitasking, but it feels good to not put pressure on myself to remember everything. I make my list and get through it, but I'm not running around crazy, trying to stay on top of six things at once. Or twenty-five at once, like when I was working as a nurse-bot.

Speaking of nursing, something really cool has happened, or is about to happen. Finally, nurses portrayed as the human beings and professionals that we are. I hope the American public sees it and starts to wake up. Not just waking up to what nurses do and endure, but also to the reality of health care and that along with all the pressures of the job, professionals in health care are not treated very well by their employers in the current profit-focused model of sick care delivery.

This nursing movie trailer. Please see the movie when it comes out. It looks to be released around Nurses Week, early May, amid the usual consternation and heartburn that the weeklong "event" causes nurses. At least this year, something in our favor.

So now that I've bitched out all my frustration of the week, I am going to move on and do something productive today. One thing.

Off to the woman cave...