Since being back in school, I can’t seem to turn off my brain when it comes to Anatomy and Physiology. When I sleep, it just won’t shut off. I dream A&P, I see it everywhere. I saw a sign in Food Lion talking about saturated fats and all I could think was, “Those are lipids who have a single bond”. I overhear people talking trying on clothes, referring to parts of their body and I immediately convert it to anatomical position. It’s no longer “Head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes),” it’s more like “Cephalic, acromial, patellar, and digital (patellar and digital) – and we can’t forget orbital, otical, oral and nasal, now can we? And did I mention, I can also sing that song using the appropriate posterior terms for the same parts? I need help.

Any free minute, I’m studying. In the car, I’ve got flash cards. At home, the books are on the table and various A&P websites are up on the ‘net. The girls are asleep, I’m studying. Today, however, it caught up with me. I had some time and I decided that I deserved a break. Should I watch Prison Break? Should I watch Sarah Connor Chronicles? Should I watch I Want to Work for Diddy? My DVR is full and begging to be purged. Plus I had three heaping baskets of clean laundry to fold. Looked like two birds with one stone, right?

But then, as if light was dawning on Marblehead, it hit me. Should I nap? Ohhhhhh, the sweet siren song of a long overdue nap, especially with Mo and Co down for the count. In less than two minutes, I hit the bathroom, set the kitchen timer to wake me in a painfully short 50 minutes, grabbed a blanket and was on the couch. I kid you not, I had just closed my eyes only to see DNA and RNA triplets marching across my eyelids when the kitchen timer went off. Had it not been for the fact that it was approaching 4pm and the girls were still asleep, I’d have reset that janx and gone back down. But, I need for them to sleep through the night and a marathon nap into the dinner hour ain’t gonna make that happen.

I will say this, though. Everyone woke up feeling fresh, pressed, like a million bucks. And when Mommy is happy, everyone is happy. Can I get witness?

The power of a nap. Nothing else like it.

Lil’Sass, who I’m guessing was being funny when she called me Hillary, tagged me to bring you up to speed on random factoids of information regarding yours truly. Oh and they truly are little factoids, or nuggets o’ info because as you’ll see in #5 and #6, well. . .you’ll see.

Evidently, there are some rules I have to follow, too. Here we go:
1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

1. I never say “I love you” to my brother unless we are being sarcastic. I know it’s weird, but it’s something we just don’t do. I think it’s understood that we love each other, that we’d take a bullet for one another. I mean, when I call him a douchebag and he calls me a dumbass, it’s all good, it’s all love.

2. I have to sleep with one foot hanging out from under the covers. That foot can’t have a sock on it, though the covered foot can, but it’s not mandatory. Even in the dead of winter, under layers and comforters, the one foot exposed to the air provides me with the perfect body temp. Additionally, I’m a stomach sleeper and I think if I were to be photgraphed from above, I’d look like the number four. I’ve got my left arm tucked under me so my left hand rests on my hipbone, my right arm is slack to the side, as is my right leg. My left leg is kind of tucked under the right leg, until it’s time to stick that foot to start the cooling process. It’s so bizarre to actually put this in writing, so I can only imagine what reading it must be like.

3. I don’t perspire like a lady, I sweat like a man. Rivulets down my back and beads along my hairline. When I sweat and then start to smell myself, I think everyone who is in a 10 mile radius of me can smell it. No, it doesn’t smell like roses, either. It’s like garlic and onion and hotness (heat, not my ridiculously good looks) and just essence o’ me. You would think one wouldn’t mind one’s own scent, but I mind, I mind a lot. I walk around at home in a tank top and don’t put on my real clothes until I’m almost out the door because I don’t want to funk them up before I leave the house. I mean, really, I sweat standing in front of the microwave. I tried that clinical strength Secret and my body shrugged it off like, “No big whoop. What else you got?”.

4. I don’t like cheese. I mean, I’ll eat a pizza, lasagna, baked ziti, mozzarella sticks (I’ll eat anything fried), but I won’t eat grilled cheese, cheeseburgers, cheese and crackers, ham and cheese on rye — you get the idea. I don’t know when it started or why. It’s not like I had a bad experience with cheese. I just don’t get the allure that turophiles seem to find in vast abundance whilst inhaling slices (or is it chunks) of Gruyere — which, by the way, I can’t even pronounce.

5. I have a short attention span which. . . oh, pretty bird on the window sill. . .

6. I rush through things and then have to repeat them because I didn’t pay attention the first time. I think that’s a function of the fact that I never have enough time to do all of the things that I want to do, have to do and should do. So, as a result, I do it all really fast so that I can get it all in, but end up not really enjoying it, not remembering it, or having to do it (be it read, listen, whatever) all over again. I kind of eat that way, too. Yikes, what a disgusting picture I just painted there.

Who to put on blast. . . .Let’s see, let’s see. . . Heads up LibbY, PK, Kendall, Mary, Tiffany and Kris! Have fun!

Back to school for Mo-dizzle and already she’s coming out of her mouth with stuff that is just off the chain. At lunch yesterday afternoon, I pulled out a piece of paper to catalog all of these nuggets which Co-dizz smeared blackberries in every orifice on her head except her mouth.

The conversation had turned to princesses (what else is new) and I wanted to see if her Disney-fied world included the likes of Mulan and Pocahontas.

Mo: And I like Ariel, and I like Sleeping Beauty, and I like Belle, and I like Snow White, and I like Cinderella. . .

Me: But what about Jasmine and Pocahontas?

Mo: Coco-hontas?

Me: Poca! Pocahontas.

Mo: Coco-hontas is alright.

We then started talking about the things she’s spied in the Chasing Fireflies catalog, namely this Queen on Hearts Costume. DH, in a master coup or an act of stupidity, told Mo that if she listened to us, was nice to her sister and did assorted other things that added up to 3 year old goodness, he’d tell Santa Claus to bring her the costume. So now, it’s all things Santa all the time. . .in September. Just to be sure she really knew about this Santa Cat, I asked, “Where does Santa live?

Mo: In the North Cold.

I have a number of little endearments for Mo and Co like Mo-dizz, Morgas, Co-bell, and Covey. Morgan had taken to calling herself baby bird for a while and wouldn’t answer to anything else. When she did answer, it was with a resounding, “Tweet, tweet”. So, as our conversation continued yesterday, I referred to her as my baby bird. I was quickly corrected.

Mo: I’m not a baby bird.

Me: Oh really? What are you?

Mo: I’m just (thinking, thinking, thinking). . .I’m just a woman.

Yeah, me, too.

So the end of the summer has officially come and gone. While I would like nothing more than to swing on the porch swing with that good ol’ Country Time Lemonade, thumb through a junk mag like US Weekly or InTouch and swat away mosquitos, that time has passed.

Still, I’m not going to be crying into my back-to-school circular for too long, though. Two words for you — Prison Break. Translation? Wentworth Miller. Woo! Woo! Woo!

I’m not dyslexic. I’m crazy. I survived the first day of school, but boy did it slap me around a few times like I owed it some money. Today is Day Two and I’m still a little nervous, but I’m working on confidence boosting between my note-taking of molecular polarity. Translation: if it tries to slap me today, I may be able to get a slap or two back in there myself. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Call me a geek, but I LOVE back to school time. Of course, the fact that my birthday is at the beginning of September helps, too, but still, when the school supplies come out, it’s like the changing of the seasonal guard. It’s AWESOME.

This year is going to be a little different come that Tuesday after Labor Day. Not only will Mo be continuing learning the preschool ropes, Co-dizzle will be sticking her big toe into the preschool pool two days a week. Mo, in fact, started this week with her “orientation” (darn you, private schools with your uber-involvement) which includes several half days, special indoor-only soft shoes required by the school and a supply list long enough to keep Jon and Kate plus 8 in the black for three weeks. But I digress. We spent this week figuring out carpool schedules, nap routines and how to fold our everyday lives into this drop-off/pick-up on time mix.

Come Monday, it’s going to get really interesting. My first class is at 11am. Yes, gentle reader, I’m going back to school (Oh, my tummy is doing a serious Shawn Johnson impression right now).

As a freshman in college, I had aspirations of becoming a doctor, specifically, an OB/GYN. I got to college, enrolled in my first bio class and that’s when it fell apart. My professor was total douchebag; it was like he just picked a random page in the book to start with and went from there. I remember most if not all of the girls on my freshman dorm studying together in the common area for our first test. Stacks and stacks of index cards with terms on them, notebooks scribbled in from cover to cover. Girls were talking in their sleep about it. The test came and went, taking with it my desire to move forward. In short, I failed.

Yeah, I know, right? Unreal. I was beside myself. Here I was an honor roll student, who, to date, had received a C+ one time — in the fourth grade — and now my record is besmirched with an F (for what the fuck, evidently). So, I went to see this professor, who summarily dismissed me with a lot of fast talk about how I must not be ready for college seeing as I was only 17, that I must be homesick, that I must not be ready, that too bad, so sad, I can withdraw from the class leaving only a W on my transcript instead of an F. I opted for door number three and hightailed it out of there before that monkey bastard could see me cry. Which I did. For feeling like a complete and utter waste of brains (oooh, it burns me up now just to think about it).

(And as a side note, a friend of mine who also failed the same test and went to the Professor Monkey Bastard was told not to worry and that he would receive as much help as he needed in order to succeed. This I find out after I withdraw, but after my little convo with Prof. MB, I wanted to be as far a way from him as possible.

Fast forward to about a year or so ago. Throughout my pregnancy with Mo and definitely with Co, I often came out of my appointments thinking about “what if” with respect to pursuing the bio and in turn, a medical career. What if I had failed the first test, but decided to stick it out? What if I just ate the F and realized that you can still pass and still be employable in the long run? There were more and more “what if” scenarios that ran through my head as time passed. I started talking to the nurses in at the practice about how they got started in nursing. One related her story to me about how she had been 35, working in finance and raising her family when she decided to quit and go to school. Now, she’s late(r) 30’s and nursing. “Well hell,” I thought, “I’m not even 30 yet. I could do that!”

I sat on my info for a while until one night turned to DH and said, “I want to go back to school. For nursing.” And just like that, it was out of my mouth and in motion. I was going to open houses. I was talking with heads of departments. I was visiting campuses, submitting applications, requesting transcripts (what an exercise in frustration THAT is) and then, I was receiving my letter of acceptance. I’ve bought my back to school supplies, I’ve gotten a new backpack (no, I didn’t opt for the monogram, but I did consider it). I didn’t take it as far as the back to school outfit, but I may reconsider

Holy crap! I’m going back to school (here comes another stomach double back handspring followed by an triple salto). I’ve got three classes to take before I actually start the nursing program, which means, this time next year, that’s where I’ll be.

So, this coming Monday morning, I’ll take the girls to their respective schools before heading over to Anatomy and Physiology. Yeah, nothing like the various human systems right after breakfast.