Biofreeze and CNN....BNN?

I always dreamed of how I would spend my school-free Saturday's.  I'd get up early, go to the gym, maybe do grocery shopping, take up an exquisite hobby, do a puzzle, maybe work my way through Julia Child's cookbook.  

Riiiiiiiight.

The actual picture?  I did complete 4.5 miles on the treadmill and got a shower but now I'm watching Jonas Blizzard coverage on CNN.  Okay, with Pino Grigio.  It's hysterical.  In one scene, the young, blonde reporter in Central Park was hit by a snowball onscreen.  She brushed it off like a pro.  Then Steven Tyler from Aerosmith walks up with his daughter Liv and they (in a seemingly high manner) promoted his new single along with family hugs and hot chocolate.

Riiiiiiiiiight.  [Insert peace sign here.]

I have to admit, this is good entertainment.  It's not that I like watching millions of people struggle in terrible weather.  But it is fascinating to watch "Walking Dead"like scenes as a person walks down Capitol Avenue in D.C.  Or Steven Tyler stealing a kid's air mattress and go sailing down a hill in Central Park.  Seriously, travel was banned in NYC and hundreds (or more) people are flocking to Central Park for a massive snowball fight and sledding.  They're playing in the snow!

I'll drink to that.

So I'm happy to blow a Saturday afternoon this way...in seven short months, I will be in my first PhD class.  Yes, my board chair asked me to start my doctorate.  So I found a nice hybrid program in Ethics that allows me to stay in Indianapolis the majority of the time.  The website is scary...they say they only admit 25% of all applicants and most are JD's and MD's.  It almost scared me away.  But I trudged through the application, going as far as to hire an editor for my writing sample.  My system CEO and board chairperson wrote me a recommendation and 36 hours later, I received an email from Loyola saying I'm in their early admit selections.  

That.....was terrifying.  What?  WHAT?

Obviously, I'm still fightiing my self-doubt.  I was truly prepared to receive a rejection letter that I wasn't of the academic caliber they seek.  That I wasn't going to be deemed smart enough.  

But here I am.  A doctoral student.  I never really wanted to do a doctorate.  I did a few years ago, to prove my mental prowess and earn some respect.  But now?  I didn't feel it necessary.  I celebrated some serious success and stomach acid reduction when I finished my second master's.  I'm done!  Forever!  Yay!  Then, in November, my board chairperson point-blank asked me to do the doctorate.  Okay, FINE.  It's not how I really want to spend my Saturday's again, but, hey, what's another 4-5 years?  Maybe by the time I'm 42, I will REALLY be done with school.  Fingers crossed?

Dr. Dorrie?  Yeah....please never call me that.  I never want education and my opportunities to go to my head.

The other reason I've been in the family news feed lately is that I tore my rotator cuff.  I was saving kittens from a burning car, don't ya know.  True story!  

At least that's what I told the system ethics committee when I couldn't attend this past week.  Ugh....I've been doing so well on my treadmill conquests and my abs are threatening to actually make a reappearance.  And I admit that I discovered the stupid leggings the girls are wearing these days with riding boots.  I will NOT do the riding boot craze but the compression leggings are pretty awesome.  I found boot cut leggings that compress everything from the knees up...so they're flattering.  Maybe that's the wine talking but my body is definitely responding to the regular exercise.  Over 100 miles since Dec. 27 and I don't know how many thousands of crunches.  Push up's, however, have been suspended.  

Last week, I was at #49 of 50 push-up's, in my regular routine.  I was jammin' to my tunes and when lifting myself back up, I heard a very audible "rrrrriiiiiiipppppp" in my left shoulder.  And instant pain.  Fabulous.  

I figured it was a torn muscle and nursed it for a few days.  Then on Tuesday, it got so bad I wanted to puke so I called the doctor.  Had an X-Ray to placate the insurance and am waiting for clearance for the MRI.  But when I googled my pain points in my shoulder, it's pretty obvious that I tore something in my rotator cuff.  I'm just not sure how bad the tears are and please, oh please, can we not do surgery?    I hope PT will be enough.  That and Biofreeze.  Biofreeze has been my friend - it's an IcyHot that works for a couple hours.  It's wonderful.  Buy stock in the stuff.

  

So here's to pain-free rotator cuff tears, about 25 more school-free Saturday's, and a blizzard that isn't happening in Indiana for once.  Stay safe, New Yorkers, and keep up the snowball fights!

Decisions, Decisions

A strange thing struck me this past holiday season.  

Since we live 150 miles away from most members of our family, we do not seem them all that often.  Probably five times a year, tops.  We try to text and email to stay in touch since we do not see them but the fact remains - we just don't see our family that much.  

As I studied my aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family this Christmas, I realized that they tend to change between holidays.  Hair styles change, weight comes and goes, and wrinkles might be more or less evident one year.  I'm not sure why it required a Christmas Eve celebration in my uncle's basement rec room, but I realized that everyone is a sum of their daily choices.  The hair/weight/wrinkle changes I notice from year to year happen in the day-to-day lives they lead.  Maybe they decide to go gray and stop coloring their hair.  Maybe they opt for salads instead of bacon to drop a few pounds.  Maybe they stop indoor tanning and no longer look like leather.  

Whatever the case, life happens in those little decisions.  

I see it in myself, too.  Particularly in pictures, I notice my own superficial changes in hair, weight, and wrinkles from year to year.  While I might look fabulous one year as compared to another, it took a lot of sacrifice and styling.  While I might look frumpy and bloated, it took a lot of long days and lack of attention to proper diet, exercise, or rest to get there.  

Regardless, I'm on my own journey and the destination is the journey itself.  The whole point of this life is to keep moving, keep growing, keep becoming who you are really meant to be.  

But those daily choices matter.  We make 1,000 little decisions each day and they all matter.  They all add up to something.  And it's not just the choices that lead to our physical appearance - the choices that craft and polish our inner-most heart and soul matter, too.  Each choice adds to or detracts from our character. 

I will pay attention to the small choices I make each day.  They all count and they all matter.

Hope

Have you ever found hope in the most random of places?

Like in a farm field in southern Indiana, in the first week of January?

Jack and I took a ride yesterday to a new brewery in southern-ish Indiana.  It's a darling little place with rockin' IPA's, hard cider, and nachos that are made out of tater tots.  Seriously, does drinking GET any better?  Not that it was about drinking but it was our first date in a while.  I have this hang up he's trying to alleviate...when we host company, I inevitably have to stay home with "the girls" because they don't want to visit breweries or someone's not feeling well, etc.  As a result, I've been to about two of Indianapolis' 294 breweries.  

So I blew up in a stupid and immature manner the other day, claiming that I "never get to do anything cool."  I know this is not true, hello, I get to go to Rome every year, have beautiful friends and family, and have the very unusual experience of liking/loving my job.  But, hey, in the moment, sometimes a girl needs the honor of gracing a new brewery with her beau.  

En route to said brewery, we started noticing a crazy color as we raced down I-65 South....GREEN.  What were those beautiful green fields that looked a little like broccoli?  In contrast to the stormy/gray/rainy sky of January 9, why did I suddenly feel like I was in Ireland?  Why did I feel inclined to take a deep breath of gratitude, that spring was only a farm field away?  I know winter wheat greens up pretty early, but the earliest we have ever seen it was March.  Late March.

I texted my friend Vera to verify the winter wheat diagnosis.  She conferred and confirmed.  Yes.  Indianapolis is just that spring-like, with our mild, El Niño temps, the winter wheat is already sprouting.  "Rejoice," she said, "for this is a tried-and-true sign that this won't be a bad winter."

Did I mention that, 24 hours later, I am sitting in our living room, hypnotized by the swirling snowflakes outside?  With a peek of sunshine every now and then, it's snowing without purpose; the flakes sort of drift around as if there's no gravity.  It looks artificial, actually, that I'm on a movie set and someone's piping fake snow onto my property.  It's very pretty - like the snow that you imagine when lovers glide around an ice-skating rink, Louis Armstrong singing in the background.  Don't tell anyone, but I like the snow.  It is our first snow in Indy this year and apart from a couple snowstorms throughout the winter, this is about all we get.  Jack and I declared this a snow day; despite his having to work for a couple hours earlier, it seems like a perfect excuse to not leave the house, light the fireplace, not get dressed beyond our Adidas pants and Notre Dame sweatshirts, and cook a roast in the oven.  I'm sure hot chocolate is on the menu later.   

Despite the snow today, the green farm fields gave me hope.  An odd source of hope, but still hope.

What else has given me hope lately?  The fact that the days are getting a teeeeeeny bit longer each day; it's no longer pitch black at 5:15 p.m.  The fact that I taught my first 5- hour long class last Thursday and survived.  Holy cow, that's a long time.  But it went well, despite taking every morsel of energy I had that day (and the next day).  The fact that the sense of peace with which I was gifted in Italy this past fall remains with me.  I had a "rock" of "yuck" in my chest before we went on pilgrimage.  I have not written about the pilgrimage but plan to eventually.  I bitched a lot during the trip itself, for I do not usually take well to group outings and someone else's schedule and agenda.  I am working on that but the Rock of stress/worry/anxiety/guilt/obligation dissolved in Italy and has not yet returned.  That gives me hope.  

My parents are finally starting to eat well and take care of themselves.  They no longer hesitate to say "I love you" when they want to - for years, those were words we didn't say too often.  I have no idea why, but I am glad they are making a resurgence.  It gives me hope.

My own slaving gym routine is giving me hope right now...that I am not beyond hope.  With the insane stress of my hospital ops jobs and grad school, I have not seriously worked out in years.  I walked on the treadmill most nights after work, racking up between 10-14 miles a week.  But I never ran, did any kind of ab work, or weight lifting.  That has changed and my "new day" began on December 27.  Since then, I walked 28 miles, running 9.9 of them.  I have done almost 3,000 crunches.  When I got out of bed yesterday morning, I felt leaner.  Like I had less of a gut.  Surprisingly, consistently doing 200+ crunches a day will have an effect on you (!).  This whole consistency thing is a bit shocking, for I cannot remember committing to any fitness goal like this before.  It gives me hope.  

As does my other area of newfound consistency - that of prayer/meditation.  I am terrible at regular prayer intervals but find it easier to carve out moments of mindfulness throughout the day.  Those moments lead to moments of prayer.  It's like of like my "crunch challenge."  I cannot do 365 crunches at one time, but if I do 50 in the morning, 200 as part of my workout, 50 after dinner, and my last batch before bed, they are all accomplished.  Same with prayer....while I cannot easily complete all of my wonderings/reflections/prayers in a 30 minute setting, I can find a few moments here and there throughout the day.  This gives me hope.  

So while it's still not-quite-mid-January, I have hope.  Hope that everything will be okay.  Hope that warm, sunny days will return soon.  My blood pressure is under control, the rock of yuck is far away, and I have a roast succulently cooking in the oven on this snowy Sunday.  It all gives me hope!

The Makings of a Dorrie

I miss writing.  So I shall continue.  

Dorrie's "Ab Crunch Extravaganza" continues.  I am regularly able to do 275 crunches.  I am not to 365 a day yet, but I keep telling myself that I am a work in progress.  I am already stronger than I was a week ago.  Work in progress.  The plant that keeps growing through dirt.

Because I am.  Some days I feel I have come so terribly far and other days, well, I'm glad I got out of bed and didn't cry in the board room.  Just yesterday, I had a terrible night's sleep and had to chair an ethics consult about transgenderism and the hospital's stance on transgender procedures, sensitivity training, and advocacy.  It's kind of hard to not laugh when the meeting is full of terminology pertaining to genitalia and we argue the moral perspective of a breast augmentation for the intention of cross-dressing, not a full gender transition.  Seriously.  Did I mention I was the only woman in the room?  Again?

I flashed back to 2009 when I was the administrative fellow, learning, soaking up everything, and trying to be effective while not making a fool of myself.  In this particular meeting, I thought it best to shut up.

But the conversation was SO heady, about institutional Church teaching and cutting edge moral debate for which there have been no formal teachings.  So we're left to...well, figure it out.  This stuff is hard.  These issues trouble Catholic healthcare nation-wide and no one has the answers yet.  

Sometimes I feel like whopping for joy and clicking my heels in glee when I realize I love my job.  I can't believe I'm in this position, making a difference for our ministry.  And sometimes, I glance in the mirror to check that my eyeliner is not running, notice my eye is twitching again, and wonder what the hell I got myself into.    

I will submit my PhD application this weekend and will hopefully get accepted.  Deep inside, I'm still that adolescent who fears going out for volleyball because (gasp!) what if I don't make the team?  Despite two master's degrees and numerous trips across the globe, I'm still that insecure girl at times. Will they like me?  Will they accept me?  Will this doctorate thing work out after all?  It feels like the proverbial fork in the road - if I am accepted to the program, this ethics gig is the right path.  I'm increasingly being referred to as "ethicist" (and more importantly, feeling more confident in my moral judgments and clinical ethics recommendations).  But my employer has made it pretty clear that they expect me to have a doctorate in Ethics.  So if I don't get into this program, then what?  Apply to another and live across the country from Jack?   Sigh...I don't even want to think about it.  

I miss hospital operations but I don't.  I miss the people and the wonderful interactions with patients and staff.  I do not miss the radiology image viewing system crashing at 2 a.m.  And me having to get showered and dressed to go in and calm the mess.  Then try to gut through countless meetings that day.  Tomorrow, I teach my first five-hour Ethics class to nursing administration.  I am back to telling myself that I GET to do this and if things get really bad, just pretend I'm on Saturday Night Live.  That works, right?  As long as I don't get caught lip-syncing?  

There's a big show being binge-watched right now, called the "makings of a murderer."  I am not going to watch that but it does make me think about the "making of an ethicist."  These long, windy, sometimes-scary roads have to be taking me somewhere, right?  I keep telling myself to have faith, to go where God leads me.  But it's never easy and despite my frequent requests, God hasn't emblazed any neon signs in my immediate path.  

Oh well....Just keep swimming.  

365 Laughs in 365 Minutes

I have 2,350 miles on the road planned for January.  I'm teaching four classes this month.  I applied to start my doctorate in the fall.  I started running again, taking up the "365 miles in 365 days" challenge.  And I masochistically added 365 crunches a day for 365 days.  Since I haven't done any ab work since the mid-90's, this crunch challenge is proving more difficult than the running challenge.  Can't.  Quite.  Cough.  It.  Hurts.  So.  Bad.  

We somehow survived the holidays and the "holiday hangover" is in full force this evening.  I have been off work since 12/24, celebrating Christmas, cleaning out every closet in my house and organizing, then hosting New Year's in Indy.  It was only supposed to be our dear friends and siblings but then my folks lamented the fact that they had no plans on New Year's Eve.  What's two more people when you already have six?  Eight.  It was a very full house.  I have no idea how the Tanner's did it...we would not have had room for Comet the dog or Kimmy Gibbler.  During preparation for New Year's Eve dinner (a succulent turkey!), our kitchen literally reminded me of the opening scenes from "Home Alone" where all those people were in the kitchen.  

It felt like I was watching an anthill.  On speed.

Everyone ate and drank too much but we played "Things."  Have you heard of this game?  Everyone gets a slip of paper and you will have to answer a question such as "Things you don't want to find on your sandwich."  It digresses quickly.  And you find out that your future sister-in-law has a filthy mind.  It was hysterical and for the third time in three weeks, I found myself with sore stomach muscles the following day from laughing so hard.  

[Perhaps this is helping my crunch challenge!]

I love my family and friends and feel so incredibly blessed.  I love our times together when we eat too many carbs and forget to cook the broccoli and green beans.  We can live on shrimp cocktail and when talking about it, a ten-minute diatribe starts about the origins of the word "cocktail."  Christmas was beautiful and New Year's was a bit exhausting - but still filled with a lot of awesome memories.  We toasted the Time Square ball drop together; I kept glancing around the room, not sure how so many wonderful people ended up in my life.  So entirely blessed.  But of course, it had to come to an end.

Regardless of all the time throughtfully Christmas shopping, wrapping, decorating, giving, cooking, traveling, churching, laughing, and toasting, it is always nice to return to normal.  As excited as I am to carefully decorate the Christmas tree and hang garlands on our stairway rails, I am so happy to tear everything down and pack it away come January 1.  

Our New Year's party petered out by 6 p.m. on New Year's Day and everyone left for their own corners of the state.  Jack and I, with my brother Brady and his fiancee, Eva, cleaned up the kitchen for hours. Everyone had frazzled nerves and everyone left for their own corners of the house.

Did I mention that Brady is living with us in Indy?  He got a job down here in October and has been cooking us dinner every fourth night since then.  Eva is wonderrful - their wedding is scheduled in August.  So we are privy to their pre-wedding fights about appetizers and who should stand in what order in the bridal party.  Jack and I remember fighting like that - but it's good to be on the other side of marriage!  Honestly, having Brady around all the time and Eva on weekends is starting to feel as though we live with two 26 year old's we didn't birth.  

We're in weird roles of being siblings and yet parents, too.  I try to minimize the number of times I tell Brady to take out the trash.  LOL.

So while our holiday hangovers are going strong on this Sunday evening, tomorrrow starts a new year at work.  New beginnings, new goals, and new initiatives.  New workout plans, new ideas to read more non-fiction, and finally run that half-marathon.  Here's to a new year!  Make it a good one!