okay then

"I was disgusted with myself for having complained about things. I was doing what I did of my own free will and I was doing it stupidly. ... You God damn complainer. You dirty saint and martyr, I said to myself."

i feel like a mean grumpus with a bad attitude right now, so i'm going to hold off on writing tonight and hope for a few good hours of sleep to make me better.

remember how like one month ago my entire life was totally different???

i can't really believe how much has changed in such a short amount of time. i know a lot of it is my own damn fault. but regardless, sometimes when i remember about all of that i feel a little less terrible and guilty for feeling kind of down on days like today. and a little more thankful for the amazing friends in my life. i really don't deserve you kids, but thanks for all the lovin'.

would you care to comment?

i was recently notified that people couldn't post a comment on here without "being a member." i guess you have to "belong" in order to talk to me...
i thought i had things set so that anyone could comment, but i'm apparently even dumber at this whole blog thing than any of us ever thought possible.

i believe it has all been sorted out now, so if you'd be so kind as to try posting comments and let me know if we're good i'd appreciate it.
thank you all and goodnight.

along for the ride

on thursdays i will be at school from 8-5, which wouldn't be bad because that's like a regular job. but what makes it bad is that our entire day is spent in one of two windowless lecture halls. the first and last hours of the day are in the room with two-toned pink walls, and the middle 18 hours of the day will pass stagnantly in the room with grey walls. the teachers move around us as our butts (and brains) go numb. i mean really, a girl can only listen to so much pharmacology and pathophysiology before her mind liquefies. and no human should have to sit still for that long.
and also we only get 20 minutes for lunch.

i love reading on the bus. i love that i get time twice a day when that's really about the only thing i can do. right now i'm reading ernest hemingway's "a moveable feast" and completely loving it. yet i think that it may be largely responsible for my recent creativity crisis.
"...I knew too that I must write a novel. I would put it off though until I could not help doing it. I was damned if I would write one because it was what I should do if we were to eat regularly."
"How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?"
"...sometimes, if the day was bright, I would buy a liter of wine and a piece of bread and some sausage and sit in the sun and read one of the books I had bought and watch the fishing."

i wish my bus route were longer.

is it tuesday already?

do you ever have those days where you run around like a mad person, feeling insanely busy... but then you get to 5:27pm and have no idea what you actually even accomplished?
well, that has been my day today. i know that i have been productive, and i even got to cross a few things off of my to-do list. yet the list seems twice as long now as when i started, and i'm exhausted from a full day.

it worries me a bit to know how tired i am now, already, before school has even really started.
tomorrow morning in lab we will be learning how to move patients around and also how to bathe them. did i mention that we practice these things on each other? so i will have my very own chance to both give and receive a sponge bath from one of a my new virtual-stranger classmates. at 7:30 in the morning. can you say uncomfortable?

i must say, i know this is only the third day that i've had a blog, but i'm really enjoying it. it makes me reflect on my day a bit and think about what has happened. i think that's a good habit to get into and i want to thank all of you for giving me the excuse and motivation for that.

and now, i'm going to go run. running here simply can't compare to running in athens where good routes abound just outside your front door. here in the city there are always so many people around, and cars, and chaos. running seems more like a chore here than the peaceful quiet time it was in a-town. if anybody has any good suggestions for how to make running in a place like this fun, please feel free to send 'em my way.

i hope you're well, dear friends. i sure do miss you all.

dear sweet baby Jesus...

today was my first day of nursing school. well, sort of; it was really just orientation. i spent all day sitting in lecture halls listening to professors try and explain to us what to expect this first quarter. before lunch a few second year students took us on a tour of the health sciences building, and in the uplifting and encouraging way of any good future nurse, expressed that if we don't die in the first two quarters of the program, it probably means that we're invincible and could survive armageddon. in the afternoon we met the staff who will supervise us at our clinical sites in the hospital. they talked about dress codes, transportation to the sites, and how to avoid killing any patients on our first day. thanks a lot, everybody. i feel much better.

i also came to the unfortunate realization that school is expensive. i mean really, really expensive. my bank balance will be wiped out when i am finished buying books and materials alone--and this balance is already borrowed money.
so i'm sending out an invitation to all of the rich and generous people reading this blog: feel free to send any kind of financial support you want! i am no longer too proud to take it!
i realize this is in vain. i know plenty of wonderfully generous people, but unfortunately they also seem to be in this boat of paupers, rowing with me through the rough waters of debt and interest rates and loan cosolidation.

welcome to your generation, liz cooke. you have finally arrived...

and so it begins

people have been telling me i should start my own blog for ages now. and quite honestly, i would have done so sooner but i couldn't come up with a good name for it. not that this is the best, but hey--it was available.

i hope i'm good at this blog thing. i hate starting things i can't follow through with...

i wish i could have been posting over the past few weeks. i had some amazing stories from my trip across america that i would have loved to share, yet without a handy jessm to help me log things, the good times were lost.

since my arrival in this seemingly foreign yet oh-so-familiar land, i know that countless blog-worthy incidents have occurred. yet at this exact moment, the only thing i can think of is the punchline of an apparently hysterical joke that an older gentleman was telling his grown son as they worked on roofing a house (i was walking past on my way to the park): "and he said, you can't borrow money from me, i don't even have enough to buy a lollipop!"
followed by riotous laughter from the older man and confused looks from the younger. i'm just glad nobody fell off the roof.

i start school tomorrow. why am i not sleeping already...
sleep tight, dear friends.