Tag: the things you just do

From the Archives. . .

I was going to write a post about trying to break off my relationship with Ben and Jerry since the weather has gotten warmer and the clothes are becoming shorter and smaller.  Then, I had to feed the baby. Then I had to feed the girls. Then I had to change the baby. Then I got on Pinterest. Then I got on Facebook. Then I had to feed the baby and the girls. Then I had to. . .well, you get the idea.  So, I decided to reach into the vault and let a former incarnation of myself do the talking.  Enjoy!
Originally published on August 11, 2009
So you know you need to change your dietary intake when Weight Watchers uses your photo in their advertising.
Yes, that’s Mo-dizz at about 8 weeks and she was quite put out, despite her commanding hourly rate.
And I will be the first to admit that I have horrible self-image issue and have wrangled with my weight for as long as I can remember. Let me back up for a second, though — this post is by no means a solicitation for compliments. I’m just trying to relate a story within its proper context. So let us continue.
Back in May, when it was unseasonably cool for a period of several days, I went to put on a pair of jeans. Shockingly, this same pair of jeans that I had worn just a few short weeks before had shrunk while waiting idly in the closet. I mean, really, imagine my surprise when I go to hoist those jokers over my hind parts and am met with considerably resistance! I couldn’t believe it. The combination of lack of use plus an as yet to be identified microorganism that nests in the fabric of individuals favorite articles of clothing, rendering them at least a size too small is the only explanation I have as to why these jeans didn’t fit.
I tried to suck in the gut, lay flat on the bed and fight my way into the jeans, but no haps. And after trying every trick in my book to get into those bad boys, I pulled out my last trick — I cried. Oh, how I cried. I cried so hard that DH came running upstairs thinking that I had slammed my hand in the closet door or lopped off my foot trying to shave that tricky space where your foot and leg connect. Imagine his surprise. Wife crying over jeans that don’t fit — sounds like Miller time to me.
Suffice it to say, DH very diplomatically and very chivalrously suggested several ways to make peace with the jeans and even get back into them. Hence the return to the double W. So, for the last 17 weeks, I have been increasing the fruit and veggies, reducing the junk, working out and have been met with some good results. It’s not rocket science, but it burns me every time because I just want to have the metabolism of a fruit fly, eat a Cinnabon or two and not feel like I could balance a tray on my bloomin‘ onion riding behind me.
17 weeks is a long time. DH has really been a trouper, going so far as to read labels, inquire about portion sizes and such when he’s in the kitchen. For the most part, I eat what I want, just less of it. I am a sucker for the 100 Calorie packs and our pantry is a Nabisco who’s-who of cookies and crackers. I make lunch for me and the girls everyday, our standard fare consisting of sandwiches, fruit, goldfish for them and some lo-cal chips for me, which brings me to the point of this whole diatribe.
I don’t ask for much. I just want to eat my own breakfast/lunch/dinner by myself. I know you moms out there know where I’m going with this. My own mother used to say, “If I had $#!t on a stick, you’d want to have some.” Oh, truer words were never spoken! I always was cajoling for a taste of this, or a bite of that. Not once did I think that roles would be reversed. Everyday, at almost every meal:
Breakfast for Mo and Co:
Buttered Toasted Oat Nut Bread (mmmmm, oat nut bread)
Yo-Baby Yogurt
sliced apple with Peanut butter
Breakfast for Me:
Buttered (spray butter) Toasted Nature’s Own White Wheat bread
Weight Watchers Yogurt
sliced apple, plain
Their bread is squ-oval, my bread is square. Evidently they are traditionalists because they want square toast. I cut theirs into a square. Nothing doing — they want mine.
Mo: Hey Co, want some of Mommy’s yogurt?
Co: Yes! Yes!
Waiiiiiit! How are you going to offer up my yogurt?!
Lunch is just a variation on a theme. Sandwiches for us all, goldfish for them, Light Ruffles for me. Guess what they want to have? This story wouldn’t have to be told had I not had to take them to task about it while we were out with friends at the pool. All the kids are water-logged and sun-screen slick, sitting at the picnic table while moms dole out juice pouches, quartered sandwiches, goldfish and sliced fruit. The kids are grubbing, and the moms start to take bites and nips of their food. I reach for my little bag of chips and Co’s voice floats on over, “Some? Some. Chips. Mommy?” And knowing the re-direction is a cardinal rule in parenting, I redirect the little dickens over to her goldfish. Nope. Again — “Some. Chips. Mommy?” and again, the redirect followed with a firm, “No, Co. You eat your lunch. These are Mommy’s.” Back and forth, we do this dance, my partner inevitably becoming Mo before it’s all said and done. Throughout it all, I don’t relent, a fact that does not go unobserved by my friend we are breaking bread with.
Since that episode, I know she’s humorously regaled at least two other people with how I denied my own children food I had reserved for myself. It’s not as though these chips were $20 a bag or the last bag on Earth. The bottom line was, I was hungry and I wanted to eat something that I knew wasn’t going to be detrimental to my eating plan on the double W. A few goldfish wouldn’t have killed me, but those who know me know that I like dinner and I love dessert. Why blow it at lunch on goldfish when there’s much better stuff to be had later?
At any rate, I have since shared the coveted chips with the girls at lunch at a later time. And after chomping down a fistful, my two sweeties said, “I don’t like these. Can I have goldfish?”
Of course.
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IN: ON: June 29, 2012 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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If You Give a Mom a Moment. . .

If you give a mom a moment, she’ll probably take a deep breath before picking up her “to-do” list.

Taking that deep breath will make her wrinkle her nose at the stink wafting out of the diaper pail.

Once she’s taken out the bag of dirty diapers, she’ll probably collect all of the trashes from the rest of the bathrooms.

In the master bathroom, she’ll notice this morning’s towels laying in a pile on the floor.  She’ll replace the old towels with clean ones and decided to run the dirties through the laundry.

Not wanting to run half a load, she’ll strip the beds and empty the hampers.

Once in the laundry room, she’ll see that she is low on detergent, so she’ll head to the kitchen to grab the magnetic pad off of the fridge to make a grocery list.

She’ll write down detergent, open the fridge an check to see what else she need to pick up.

With her head in the fridge, she’ll spy the chicken breasts she took out the night before to defrost for dinner.

Thinking of dinner makes her hungry and she’ll realize that the breakfast table hasn’t been cleared.

She’ll clear the table, crumb the table, and wipe down the table.

All of that cleaning has given her an appetite and she realizes that she hasn’t had breakfast.

She’ll brew a pot of coffee and reach for her favorite mug, but the mug isn’t there.

She’ll open the dishwasher to find it wedged between a milky sippy cup and peanut-butter smeared Hello Kitty plate.

Once she has the dishwasher off and running, she’ll de-crumb the kitchen counters and sweep the kitchen floor.

Sweeping the kitchen floor will remind her of Cinderella, which will make her think of the Princess themed birthday party the kids will be attending this week-end.

Thinking of the birthday party, she’ll head to the hall closet where she keeps emergency party gifts.

On her way to the closet, she’ll wind her way through two coats, four pairs of mis-matched shoes, a doll-carriage, a doll missing its head, several books overdue at the library, and a Netflix DVD.

She’ll reseal the DVD in the envelope, slide the library books onto the mail table by the door, strap the headless baby into the carriage, place the shoes at the foot of the stairs to be taken up on her next pass, and hangs the coats in the closet.

Once in the closet, she feels around for the party gift and gives herself a pat on the back for her proper prior planning.

A pat on the back makes her think how nice a massage would be, so she decides to add that to her “to-do” list.

And chances are, before she reaches for that “to-do” list, she’s going to take a deep breath, if only for just a moment.

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IN: ON: May 30, 2010 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Table for Two

The other day it rained, and rained, and rained. The kids were like the little boy and Sally from “The Cat in the Hat”, “too wet to go out, too cold to play ball, so we sat in the house. We did nothing at all.”

You all know how much I loathe love arts and crafts. After school, I raided my scrapbooking box and pulled out all kinds of stickers, scrap paper, glue dots, and crayons. I was going to have the girls make some birthday cards for the birthday parties they have this week-end.  They preferred to just cut and paste and cut and paste.  Who am I to stand in the way of artistic expression?

Five minutes later, when they were bored of that, we moved onto dress ups, Play-doh, Barbies, and tea party.  I was steadily running out of ideas, the rain kept coming down and I really wanted to stave off putting on the TV for as long as I could.  I told the girls they needed to read some library books until dinner was ready.  That bought me about 6 minutes and the biggest stroke of genius I’ve had in a long time.

I pulled their activity table into the middle of the kitchen, put their Anywhere Chairs on either side, and laid out some satin napkins.  I put out two port glasses filled with milk and two crystal candle holders with some stubby candles left over from the Nor’Easter.  I called the girls to the table for dinner and told them how excited I was that they were going to join us for dinner.

The look of bewilderment on their faces evaporated as quickly as it arrived once they saw the spread on the table.  When I offered them a choice between hot dog or grilled chicken, Morgan snapped her napkin across her lap and said, “I’ll have the chicken, please.”  Coever insisted on the hot dog.  Their respective entrees came with corn on the cob and cucumbers with hummus.

Once plated on some real dishes (i.e. not plasticware) and served with their tall port glasses of milk, you would have thought Morgan and Coever were some society ladies taking afternoon tea.  The kitchen was filled with “Why yes please” and “Oh isn’t this pleasant” and “Let’s have a toast”.  I knew I took a risk with the candles and the glasses, but smack my face and call me Rosie, those two were ever so mindful of the potential to set the house on fire or impale themselves on a shard of glass.

If they toasted each other once, they toasted each other half a dozen times, each more vigorous than the last.

For dessert, the kitchen offered a choice of chocolate pudding or a Popsicle.  Didn’t the little diva (a.k.a. Morgan) request her pudding to be served in a bowl, on a saucer, with a spoon and some cool “huh-whip“?  Coever opted for the Popsicle and refill of milk, natch.

When they had dined sufficiently and lapsed into a nice post-dinner conversation about what to do next, I had to shake my head and smile.  Something as routine as dinner can be made totally brand new with the addition of a few simple touches.  I’m glad they enjoyed it.

Maybe next time, they can leave ol’ Mom a tip. . .

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IN: ON: May 19, 2010 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Domestic Goddess

I actually enjoy the fatigue that comes from a good-ol‘-stem-to-stern housecleaning. These days, however, the house is lucky to get the dust buster poked in a few corners, let alone a good Swiffering. One neighbor of mine described her house as “neat, but dirty”. I think we officially joined that club when I was tempted to throw some Listerine in the towel bowl just to make sure I got all germs with the next flush.
Truly, I don’t have enough hands, hours, or motivation to hit all the baseboards, quarter-rounds, window panes, cracks and crevices that need attention. Which, would be all of them, in case you’re wondering. Of course, when Mo practiced her cursive writing in the dust coating her bookcase, I knew I had to do something.
The problem with housecleaning is that, like with so many other household tasks, they seem to multiply exponentially in a matter of moments. For instance, I may see a fingerprint (or five) on the window pane, so I go to get some Windex. En route through the kitchen for my supplies, I step through a minefield of shredded crayon wrappers, Cheerios, broken hair elastics, and assorted Barbie shoes. I make a notation to get the broom and the dust buster. In the kitchen, the sink looks like it threw up since no one ran the garbage disposal before turning on the dishwasher. I Clorox the sink, run some water and add some baking soda down the disposal. Then, just for kicks and because no one else is home, I dump the rest of the baking soda down the disposal, add a few drops of red food coloring and some vinegar. “Molten lava” erupts from the garbage disposal. I’m such a child, but the glee is short lived because now, I have to clean that up, too.
Kitchen sink finally de–gunked, I notice some flower petals that have jettisoned themselves off of the plant on the window sill. This has now formed a nice little party with crumbs from the toaster and assorted condensation rings from where we’ve left glasses and mugs. I wipe down the counter and then turn around to hit the other counters. Then I see the stovetop. I wipe that down, and notice fingerprints on the cabinet doors surrounding the stove. Fingerprints! I was supposed to get the Windex for the fingerprints in the other room. And I resume my course for the cleaning supplies in the laundry room.
I open the laundry room door and clearly see that the washer and dryer have caught the same bug as the sink — there is clothing vomitus everywhere. I drag the laundry buckets out into the living room and being rolling socks, folding underwear and undershirts, and sorting 2T pants from 4T pants. When I reach to the bottom of the bucket for the last piece, my eye catches a rogue raisin on the carpet next to the bucket. Just ahead of the raisin is another broken elastic hair tie and peanut. Time to get the vacuum.
Now, I have a strong aversion to vacuuming. I mean, I would rather write a thesis on William Faulkner than vacuum. Growing up, I would do just about anything to get out of vacuuming. Ugh, it was the bane of my pubescent existence! My dad was a regular Vacuum Gestapo, what with his reviewing my work to see that vacuum tracks were clear and present throughout all carpeted areas of the house. You know, vacuum tracks — the lines in the carpet that shows that it’s been freshly vacuumed? Yeah, you gotta have the tracks.
We had this Sears vacuum that was like a bloated footstool attached to a giraffe neck length of hose topped off by a phonebook sized head that sucked up all the detritus of daily life. And it had a retractable electrical cord, so when you were done, you could press a lever and the cord would get snapped back up into the main unit. Snapped is a key word — I gave myself all kind of lashings just trying to wrap up the vacuum and put it away. And don’t get me started on dragging the darn thing through several rooms and around corners! I would tug and tug on the hose and finally, the main unit would come hurtling from another room and crash into my ankles. From the calf down, my legs were varying shades of yellowish-green black and blue marks cross hatched with electric cord lacerations. I swore I when I grew up, I’d never vacuum again.
When we got married, I think one of DH’s vows was “to love, honor and vacuum,” as he has been the sole master of our Dirt Devil. The other day, however, the rugs were looking like the entire sandbox from the pre-school has been liberally sprinkled over its dimensions. DH was outside sweeping up leaves and branches, so I thought I would surprise him by vacuuming the rugs. Such a sweet wifely thing to do, right? So I go get the vacuum, unwind the (non-retractable) cord, plug it in, step on the switch and. . .nothing.
Hmmm. We have electricity. I’ve got this thing properly plugged into the wall. I’m stepping on the lever. The handle release is working and yet, nothing. It can’t be broken; we (DH) just used it last week-end. I empty the filter, I examine the hose attachments. It’s not working. I don’t know what else to do and I don’t want to ask DH to come look at it, but I’ve already spent about 10 minutes fooling with this thing and . . .wait a minute. . . .What’s this lever right here?
Oh yes, that would be the “on” switch. When I’m done, I’m going to use my college degree to get the fingerprints off of the windowpanes.

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IN: ON: November 15, 2009 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Breakfast of Champions

Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Yeah, I’m manifesting that definition every day.
Every morning, I get up while it’s still dark to savor a few moments by myself. I usually throw on my gym clothes and head downstairs. My routine is pretty much the same: check email, check my buddies’ blogs, toss in a load of wash and empty the dishwasher. I’ve even started making lunches and prepping dinner (yeah, I’m kind of Type A). At about quarter to seven, I set out making breakfast for the girls. Once they get up, I’ve got a pretty tight routine that carries us right up to pre-school drop off.
Take yesterday morning:
6:45 – get breakfast ready
7:00 – get the girls up
7:40 – wrap up breakfast and get dressed for school
8:15 – playtime for Mo and Co/tidying up for me
8:30 – out the door, into the car, off to school
And despite all of my micromanaging, the one thing I haven’t figured out is why is it that by the time I get the girls settled down for breakfast, I realize I haven’t gotten anything for myself? I mean, they’re happily munching away and I haven’t got anything on my plate. I haven’t even got a plate!
Part of this stems from my relentless devotion to Weight Watchers. In the not too distant past, I wouldn’t let anything cross my lips that hadn’t been weighed, measured and calculated for it’s caloric impact on my body. Just grab some toast and slather on some jelly?! Not unless it’s Nature’s Own White Wheat Bread with 7 squirts of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter and 1/2 tbs of Welch’s Sugar Free Jelly per slice (points=2). Bacon and eggs? Only if it’s two slices Jennie-O turkey bacon and a quarter cup of EggBeaters cooked in a non-stick pan that has been lightly sprayed with olive oil cooking spray (points=2). Weight Watchers can make the even the most sane turn into Sally Albright.
Another part of the problem comes from the fact that I am a notoriouly finicky eater. I eat pizza and baked ziti, but I don’t like cheese. No grilled cheese, cheese and crackers or cheeseburgers. I like shrimp, but not when it’s cooked. I like tomatoes, but on my sandwiches and salads, not in chunks in my spaghetti sauce. I drink fat-free milk, which is the equivalent of water that a cow has walked past, but only with cereal. Milk and cookies? Why desecrate the goodness of the cookie with a sub-par beverage? I like my Cream of Wheat with about a tablespoon of water in it so it’s the consistency of paste rather than soup. I can eat yogurt and bananas, but when I get down to the last bite, I start to gag (I know, I’m starting to make Sally Albright look normal).
Anywhoodle, when it dawns on me that all I have is air-pie while the girls chew on Cheerios, I get up to remedy the situation. The minute my buns break contact with the chair I’m peppered with requests:
Mommy, can I have milk?
Mommy, can I have apple juice?
Mommy, can I have more milk?
Mommy can I have more apple juice?
Mommy, can I have toast without jelly?
Mommy, can I have toast without butter?
Mommy can I have toast with jelly and with butter?
Mommy can I have waffles with bacon and side of French Fries?
I spin and whirl between the fridge and the toaster, each trip pushing my own breakfast that much farther from my grasp. No wonder my stomach to think my throat has been cut. Truth be told, I should know better than to indulge Mo and Co with every breakfast request. On the one hand, I don’t want them to be hungry at school and unable to concentrate. On the other hand, let’s face it: they’re in school from 8:50 to 11:50. 3 hours without nourishment does not a famine make.
I’m only re-inforcing bad behavior with my up and down, up and down antics. I only have myself to blame when my reminders that “I’m not a short-order cook!” bring up snorts and snickers. For Christmas, they’ll probably get me a plastic name badge and a matching hairnet.
By the time I’ve gotten them sufficiently satiated and pull together some kind of semblance of breakfast for myself, they’re done and trying to pull out puzzles, crayons, finger paints, dress-up clothes, and bicycles.
So, I’ve begun a new regime after running through a couple of options. I was tempted to just put the milk, the cereal, the bread, the butter and all les accoutrements on the table during breakfast, but who wants to schlepp it out only to schlepp it back? Besides, I’ve got this thing about milk being left out (gross!), even if it is only for a 20 minute breakfast. I thought about prepping breakfast the night before, but I kept forgetting until I was already in the bed for the night. So I’ve come up with three suggestions rules to keep our morning routine machine well oiled.
1. Breakfast is what is. There are no exceptions, no substitutions, and definitely no returns.
2. Eat what’s on your plate, not what’s on my plate, your sister’s plate, or anyone else’s plate. Quelle surprise! We all have the same thing.

3. Eat what you’ve been given before you ask for more.

4. Half a spoonful of yogurt cannot possibly constitute fullness, so don’t even try it.

5. A courtesy taste is required of all foods. This includes a small portion of the food on the tines of the fork/in the bowl of the spoon going into your mouth, being chewed and swallowed. Touching the tip of your tongue to something for 0.007 seconds and declaring, “I don’t like it” isn’t the same thing.
3. When Mommy sits down, she ain’t gettin‘ up until her plate is clean. In other words, chew slowly and take small sips on that apple juice, ya dig?

I’m thinking this little list can be modified for lunch and dinner, too. What with Thanksgiving dinner all but here, I’m about to xerox this and affix it to everyone’s water glass. Then, when I sit down to eat, I’ll sit down and stay down. And we all know thankful I’ll be for that.

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IN: ON: November 11, 2009 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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hair

Hairy Situation

I’ve always had trouble pronouncing the word hirsute. It sounds like “here-soot”, but I want to say “hair-suit”, which I think makes more sense. Thankfully I never had to use hirsute in a sentence that described myself. For those that haven’t cracked a Merriam Websters in a while, hirsute refers to excessive hairiness or as Wikipedia so eloquently puts it, “excessive and increased hair growth on female humans in locations where the occurrence of terminal hair normally is minimal or absent. ” Think Barnum and Bailey’s Bearded Lady or perhaps the cafeteria lady that dished up your Taylor Ham & Cheese lunch in elementary school. You get the idea.
Now, I have to admit, I have been pretty negligent about my eyebrow maintenance as of late. I’m getting a little Frieda Kahlo to be perfectly honest. Co was out of school the other day for a teacher in-service so it was her dubious pleasure to accompany on this little junket. I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of time as I spent the better part of the morning working off those Reese Cups from Halloween, so I opted to hit up the little nail/waxing hut in the mall.

I’ve got Co strapped in the stroller, plied with Goldfish and apple juice and we make our way past the nail tech benches and rows of pedicure chairs. The young lady directs us into the waxing room — more like closet — and instructs me to lie back on the reclining chair. Co has been wheeled and parked out of the way on the left hand side of the chair, but she is in an excellent spot to see what’s going on and throw out two year old questions and concerns about my welfare.

Now, you all know I’ve got big hair and often times the curls fall forward onto my face. The tech brushes my hair off of my forehead and then turns to get her wax applicator (I’m being generous here– we all know it’s a Popsicle stick). When she turns back, the hair has moved back to my forehead. She turns and puts down the wax applicator, turns back, pushes my hair aside, albeit a little more forcefully, and then turns to get the wax. Guess what happens with my hair. Seriously, when she turned around again, I swear she gave an exasperated sigh before using both hands to push and scrunch my hair away from my face. I think she put her foot against the wall for leverage.

With my hair semi-secured off of my face, she begins to apply the wax and the strips. Co cranes her head around, straining against the stroller straps to see what’s going on. With every step of the wax and rip process, she wants to know:

“What dat?”

“You have a boo boo?”

“Ow, Mommy. Ow, ow, ow, right?”

“Your face is hurting! Your face is hurting!”

I assure her that I’m fine, though ripping hair off of one’s face using hot wax is probably about as far from fine as you can get. Part of me wonders if exposure to this beauty regimen is going to burrow into her brain and then when she’s 11 years old, she’ll have brows and a ‘stache like Madonna’s daughter and demand electrolysis.
Speaking of mustaches, I never likened myself to Tom Selleck before, but the waxing tech must have thought he and I were twins separated at birth. As soon as she finished my brows, she asks, “You want me to get your mustache, too?”
My hand flies to my upper lip, fingers probing around expecting to feel an outcropping of hair. “What?!,” I stammer “Get my what?”
“Your mustache,” she says, waxed covered Popsicle stick poised and ready to go. “I can take care of that.”
I grab the handheld mirror lying on the counter and look at my face. It’s bad enough that the ripping of the wax from my brows has raised puffy red welts around my eyes and along my brow bone. Forget about my hair preceding me when I enter a room; now my inflamed brows had that pleasure . Did I really want to add a pink puffy upper lip? No, not really.
So, I thanked the tech, tucked my chin down to my chest, pulled my curls over my brows and wheeled us out of there. As we boogied on out of the mall, I ended up walking past several of those kiosks that sell skin and hair care products, including as kiosk for threading. The young man was holding some thread between his hands as he leapt out at me. “Excuse me, Miss? Can I just ask you a question? You look really familiar.”
“No,” I said striding past. “I am NOT Tom Selleck!”

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IN: hair ON: November 4, 2009 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Feeling (dis)Oriented

So, this week I have been at orientation for school. Every day from 8am to 12pm, I’ve been bombarded with expectations, available resources, best practices, course scheduling, long-lines at the bookstore and fractions. Yes, fractions. I knew that there was some degree of mathematical knowledge involved with nursing, but to be slammed with the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions at 8am on a Monday morning is cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, I’m a Type A personality, an endearing character quirk that has consistently served me in good stead ‘lo these 30 years of mine. Before going back to school for anatomy last year, I invested in a teach-yourself-math workbook. Notice I said “invested in”, as opposed to “opened and used”. Yeah, that joker sat pristine for the past year on a shelf in my closet until about two weeks ago. In the orientation packet, there was one brief line about a math assessment and seriously, I saw my life flash before my eyes. And then I remembered the work-book. So I pulled it out, blew the dust off of the cover and started Chapter 1, Basic Mathematics. Then Season 1 of True Blood came in the mail on Netflix and well. . .here we are.

Math and I have never gotten along. In fact, one of the lowest grades I ever received was in math. In more fact, aside from getting a violation for talking in Chemistry, the only other mark on my school discipline came from my algebra teacher. I had long come to the realization that I had a bad attitude towards math. I didn’t get it, therefore, I didn’t like it, therefore, I chose to just eke out passing grades and deal with it later. Shocking, I know, but truly, I couldn’t stomach it. So, having embraced that mentality, I thought nothing of sticking whatever fiction book I was reading into my algebra book and reading that during class. Of course, the teacher had been calling on me, I hadn’t been paying attention and the charade came crashing down like my test scores over the semester.

How bad did it get? How about in sophomore geometry, when we were learning proofs, I put CPCTC for every answer on a test. Every. Single. Answer. I just looked at those proofs and knew absolutely nothing.

Fast forward to my A&P class first semester last year. My professor was talking about how tough the course was going to be, how the attrition rate was astronomical, and so on and so forth. She then went on to say that if we had a good attitude towards the class, if we acted excited when we opened our books, we’d basically trick our brains into retaining more info because we’ve been telling ourselves that A&P was the shiggity! Can you say, “skeptical”?

That little nugget of info remained with me. This past week, as we’ve continued to work on fractions, percents, and ratios, I’ve tried to get happy about it. I’ve tried positive self-talk. I’ve admitted to myself that while Math and I have agreed to disagree, we will make a truce for the sake of my impending nursing career. I will open up desirable accommodations in my memory bank and decorate it any which way Math wants, so long as the concepts move-in for an extended stay.

As the week draws to a close, I can quite honestly say that I have become quite oriented to what the next 24 months of school will be like. Seeing as I already broke the seal on my 60 pound Concepts of Nursing book, I guess I’ll be staying, fractions and all.

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IN: ON: August 20, 2009 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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