Thanksgiving Day - a real holiday for me

My kids and I decided that this year we were skipping the turkey, the stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, the green bean and dried onion casserole, the smashed yams coated with brown sugar and burnt marshmallows, fresh out of the can cranberry gel, farina balls and Pillsbury crescent rolls. Yup, this year we broke tradition from Thanksgiving food.

Instead we decided on a rolled shoulder of lamb stuffed with brown rice, mushrooms and red peppers served with: roasted fingerling potatoes seasoned with rosemary and sea salt; baked shallots; baked yams; steamed broccoli with a béchamel sauce; cranberry and pomegranate relish; fresh baked homemade yeast rolls (my grandmother's recipe) and homemade desserts - spicy pumpkin pie and pecan-carmel torte with whipped cream.

Stephen prepared and cooked the lamb, Emily make the rolls, my mom got the wine - Savennieres and Malbec, and I made the pies and somehow all the vegetables got cooked with no one actually owning that specific task.

We all agreed it was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever. It was smallish with five family and two guests. One of the guests was from India experiencing his first Thanksgiving in America and the other was from Maryland having her first Thanksgiving ever away from her Italian-American family. Panjak is not vegetarian so, there was no problem for him to eat the lamb. And Jenny was happy that our family doesn't yell at each other over dinner.

I spent the day relaxing, not studying, cooking pies and contacting friends and family.

My friend, Jimbo, from Scotland sent me greetings and wanted to know about Thanksgiving and why we Americans celebrate it, inquiring if the holiday had something to do with massacring Indians (apparently there was a broadcast in Scotland on Thanksgiving day by a woman who claimed to be a native American descendant and said the holiday originally was a celebration of Indian massacres in the colonies). Susan from Singapore sent me greetings from Asia with no questions. My Italian friend, Maria Paola, who lived in America for over 10 years knows all about Thanksgiving and says this time of year makes her miss this country.

It was a perfect holiday for me. But, I hit the books the rest of the days off.

Slogging through the semester

The picture is some of my class mates in the orthopedics lab practicing the "sub-occipital release" which is used in treating upper neck and head tension.

I finished up another grueling week of testing thrown at me by the PT department. I am managing to keep my head above water and am not on probation. Unfortunately a few of my classmates are on probation which means that they have to turn it around or they are out of the program. Everyone is already over-worked and stressed out, I can't imagine more pressure.

As we were doing pro-section and dissection last week, one of my anatomy lab partners made the comment" "Wow, I have a new appreciation for serial murderers - this is hard work!" I know, kinda sick and gross thinking but, truly body parts are connected pretty firmly and trying to get them to disconnect is a lot of work.

Enough said.

I am more than half way done with semester #1. I only have 8 more semesters to go. I got my assignment for my first clinical rotation in May. I am not going to Silver City (my first choice) but, instead I got assigned to Santa Fe. So, I plan to challenge myself not to use my car for the full eight weeks and rely only on the train and my bike for commuting purposes.

I have to say that I really like what I am learning. I like my classmates immensely. I like being part of the university and being on campus. There is a lot of positive energy on UNM's campus and campus is clean and beautiful.

My former semiconductor career seems far away now. My former life as a single parent, semiconductor engineer and unhappy romantic partner is becoming a memory where the negative stuff gets trimmed away and the good stuff stays. Those rose tinted glasses focused on the pasted are just getting rosier as time goes by.

my teachers are dead

ANATOMY - I have nine anatomy teachers, and the eight my most inspiring are dead.

I am spending at least 35 hours a week with seven cadavers studying the mysteries of the human body. So far, my favorite thing I have learned is the anatomy of the brain. It is so complicated and beautiful.

The deep study of the physical body has helped me connect with what I already know about the energetic body from ayurveda and yoga. It is really exciting for me when I make those connections.

Yes, yes I do have an anatomy teacher who is alive and overloads me with concepts and homework but still, my most inspiring teachers are the seven who have donated their bodies to me to study. I get to use their bodies to trace muscle attachments and innervations. I can see intimately what the diseases of breast cancer, lung cancer, Parkinson's, dementia and heart failure have done to the affected organs. These seven people have generously offer themselves up in service for me to learn the deep mysteries of the human body so that I will be able to help others in my new career.

There is an eighth dead teacher who is encased in plastic and sliced into 1-inch sections. He teaches me the 2-D relationships of the muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels and organs which is like I will see on an MRI.

Hitting the wall with seven weeks left to go

I hit the wall. All this studying and testing and classes has finally got me completely exhausted. I thought I could pace myself and be able to do this school thing again without all the stress. Nope. I think driving myself hard is just my nature. I am not the only one, I am amongst 25 other high achievers who are also exhausted. Last week on a Thursday afternoon during the middle of one of the 4 hour lectures the professor could see everyone was completely exhausted, some of the students were crying and the rest of us were glazed over - unable to concentrate. He stopped class and told us all to get up and go get a drink of water and try to shake it off.

I went to a Halloween party Saturday night and it was a beautiful party - probably the best Halloween party in all of Albuquerque. I fell asleep under my costume (the jellyfish) at 9:00pm and my ride woke me up at 10:00pm to leave.

Seven more weeks of this left until winter break. After that, just 2.5 years until licensing boards.