{bleeding blue}

in kentucky, uk basketball runs deep through veins.

we bleed blue.

people have followed uk basketball from the time they could understand what basketball is (and some didn't even have a choice from the time they were born...)

i am not a kentucky native, BUT i have always been a wildcat, and i do truly bleed blue.

the wildcats are my team and college basketball makes my heart beat a little faster.  i love march madness.  it's college basketball at it's finest.  it's when teams  really learn what competition is and the anxiousness of being finished is in the air.

march madness also makes me want to fulfill my desire to become a coach.  do i know a ton about basketball?  of course not.  i am far too short to ever be any good at basketball, and sports with my feet have always been my forte.  i can't play baseball, tennis, basketball, volleyball.  still... i love basketball.  i love the strength and beauty of a jumpshot and the accuracy of a good 3.  i hate bad defense and missed rebounds and bad passes.

this leads me to a desire to coach.  kentucky over the past few years has been notorious for the "middle school player" as i so lovingly refer to them as.  demarcus cousins... terrance jones... great players, but middle schoolers.  have you seen their faces?  have you seen some of the plays they pull?  i want to make them sit in a chair, look up at me, and have a little chat about the choices they've made and how they're going to fix them (and eye rolling and huffy faces have no effect on me).  i love working with my middle schoolers, and it's only given me credibility and talent to actually coach these boys.

dear coach cal.  give me the chance to work with your next middle school player!  you know you'll get one... some young man who needs a little growing up.  they can be my personal project!  (if anyone knows cal, feel free to pass this along.. i'm sure he's looking for another assistant coach!)


let's go cats!


*edit* following this post, uk beat florida and won their 27th sec title :)  loved it... they played like a team and not a young team.  their training is finally paying off!  keep it up, boys... keep it up!

{it's not even noon}

today is crazy.

it's not even noon.

SO!  tuesday i kind of noticed brownie had a little creak to her.  she's old.  it was raining.  it was cold.  i equated it to arthritis.  this morning, same deal... until i left work... it sounded as if my car wanted to break in half.

i cried, called my mechanic, and made the dreadful trip to nicholasville.  add to this that just what... 3 weeks ago?  my car got a new axel, wheel joints, and wheel bearings, i was slightly aggravated.  and frustrated.  and tearful.   essentially, i was a mess, and i think i scared the sweet older man who took a look at my car.  45 minutes later, after many prayers and a few more teary text messages to very sweet people, i heard the door open.  the mechanic said "i put some grease on that joint, you're good to go".  i honestly made him repeat it.  i didn't believe it.  brownie doesn't have simple, free fixes.   we go for the big guns and do things like, oh, have our transmission go out?  have a distributor go out?  have an axel need replaced.

i could have kissed my car.

they had me drive around the property surrounding the mechanic for about 10 minutes to make sure it fixed, it did, and i headed home.

i pull up... there's a letter taped to my door.  that's strange.  naturally, i open it, and oh, it's a letter from an attorney about our house.  apparently some stuff's hit the fan with the bank, so now my rent checks DON'T go to my landlord, but to the bank.  this could get exciting.  just what i need- more excitement in my life!


on the upper hand of all of this, HELLO ADULTHOOD!  today i feel super adult and i'm not sure if that's good or bad, but i'm learning to handle so many wonderful situations!

and i'm doing it all before noon.

be impressed (and can i tell this story to future employers to show how responsible and proactive i am?  someone tell me yes...)

{fun mail}

i love getting fun mail!  mail is a lost art... my mama likes to send cards and fun things like that which is super awesome to get :)

compassion international is also super awesome about sending me fun mail!  in the past few weeks they've sent me the coolest calendar, a travel mug, a book, and today, a scrapbook for my compassion child, but more importantly, they send me these little letters written by a sweet 7 year old in uganda!

a few weeks ago, i worked an event in wilmore, and it turned out that 3 of the people who actually work for compassion (compassion is like 80-90% run by volunteers) came.  it was really fun to get the opportunity to talk to them about the logistics of compassion and just talk about a really great organization. one of the women noticed my book i have with letters and pictures my compassion child, esther, has sent me over the years and told me she'd send me a scrapbook that compassion designed for such things!

i know i've blogged about compassion before, but i'm just in awe of them as an organization.  what they do for kids around the world is amazing... just recently, one of the compassion graduates was elected to the senate of uganda!  how cool is that?  check it out here.  it's so crazy to think that all the way over in uganda, i get to help a little girl go to school and become whatever she wants to be, and without her even knowing, she's giving me a glimpse of how God sees us... as His kids who he wants to see grow up and be examples of Him for the world to see.  i know my esther is going to do amazing things in uganda :)

if you want more info on compassion, message me or go here :)  for real... consider it... these kids will change your life...

http://www.compassion.com/

{continued joys of breaks!}

ahhhh  i'm still relishing in the fact i'm on break.

yesterday was great.  i went to work, then went to ian's.  he took the day off, and we got to hang out (which is awesome since he's leaving for csf's spring break trip to nashville on sunday!)  we went to the arboretum and walked around, made pad thai, which aside from my poor choice in chicken (i accidentally got dark meat... gross...) was SUPER good, and finished our night by going to southland's night of worship.  laid back and wonderful... my kind of day!

today was just as good... i went to work and am on day 3 of our risk game

yeah, i'm green... controlling 3 capitals. it's fine ;)

i got to take a nap, which i LOVE.  naps are the best.  i don't know why i didn't think so as much when i was a little kid... i'd gladly trade 3 year olds for their naps now!  i sat in my favorite chair and read with a good cup of coffee, then went to the craft store to use a gift card i've had for a while now and made these! 

hmmm purple, my favorite color?  how'd you guess...

Finally, my new pair of glasses came today!  i got them from costalcontacts.com and they were FREE!  yes.. free... i paid for shipping.  they're just slightly off my prescription (i don't think i measured my pupils right... darn pupils), but for free, they're kinda fun :)  not an every-day kind of pair, and i still like my other glasses better, but FREE!  i love free...

 2 more days of break... we'll see what other things i can find to entertain myself!

{eww}

for the past few days, our shower hasn't been draining right.

it's done this before... but super bad.  like bad to the point draino didn't even make a slight improvement.  so bad i went and bought a snake and learned how to snake a drain.

there are some jobs about living in a house i just find repulsing.

hair in the drain is one.  it's so nasty.  i know it's mine, but still... so gross!

another?  rodents.  i can do bugs, i can do snakes, i can do many-a-nasty creature, but the sight of a little bald tail and the sound of that scratching makes my skin crawl.  i can set the trap to get the little bugger (yes, i'm a hippie and i'm a big proponent of killing mice), but if i catch anything, i would pay a hefty price for someone to come remove it.  i'm not kidding when i say it's one of the first things i asked ian after we started dating... we had a mouse in our garage (we never caught him... he took off) and i'm pretty sure it would have been a deal breaker if he would have said 'nope... i won't get the dead thing'.

dear hair.  please please please stay out of the drain.  you are beyond gross (also, if anyone has any ideas of how to keep it out, it's one of the drains that lifts and turns...)

{breaks}

one of the greatest things about still being a college student is breaks.

i get spring break, i get fall break, i get winter break... it's great.  i'm aware that in the real-world, there is no such thing as spring break anymore.

it's such a great time to relax and NOT think about school.

this weekend has been great for that- i know i get weekends even in the school year, but so often, they're consumed with studying or doing homework, that it's nice to just be able to relax and enjoy life without the stress of trying to be a good student.

friday night was a uk gymastics meet.

i convinced ian to come with me, and brian brought my little clairebear :)  she loved it... it's hilarious, she's so girly.  she loves to twirl, she loves dolls (her favorite is a john wesley doll... i'm not kidding at all... it exists ) and she absolutely loved the vault.  she kept asking brian to make them do it again.

not the greatest picture... we were in action ;)

saturday was a full day with the boy- he came over and we made brunch... waffles, bacon, eggs... the works!  and it was beyond delicious.  then we went to the y in an attempt to play basketball.  ended up being little kid championships, so while they were adorable, we didn't get to play much.  we determined i'm NOT making uk's team anytime soon as many of the little kids shot better than me, but we had fun anyway.  then was dinner and "the town".  if you haven't seen it... really good movie.  i stayed awake, so you know it's good (if you don't know, i fall asleep during almost every movie.  it's a curse that's been passed down from generation to generation in the crook family...)

i love that it's just the first weekend of being on break.  i don't have a lot planned, but i honestly like it better that way!

{craziness}

i really like medical-based classes.  i've taken biology, anatomy, physiology, neuro, and currently, dysphagia.
learning about the body and how the body works and why certain things are the way they are astonish me. there's so much crazy stuff about how we work.

just learning about different systems, different organs, and different ways the body #1. protects us and #2. creates optimum conditions for survival is crazy.

in neuro, we learned about all the parts of the brain and how little we actually know... we don't know why tylanol works, we don't know why some people get dementia, we don't always know how the brain recovers or makes new systems of organization; it's crazy cool.

currently in dysphagia (swallowing disorders), we're learning about the neuro control of swallowing.  it's super hard and i should be studying for my exam tonight, but everything about swallowing is sweet.

so much happens to swallow and you almost never have to think about taking a drink or eating.

you chew your food in a way that it forms a ball, you have to push the food over the back of your tongue, then your body takes over.  everything widens, shortens, opens, things come down to protect your airway, and before you know it, your food's in your stomach and you're already on the next bite.  you didn't choke, you didn't have liquid go straight to your lungs... you didn't even think about it.

here's the crazy thing.  we have this thing called the central pattern generator (it's crazy... google doesn't even have decent info on it).  it controls things we do in patterns- breathing, eating, walking... how often do you think about breathing?
you can even do a lot of that in a coma.  you need almost zero neural support.  (to change it you do, so swallowing differently with liquid and food is different, but the physical act of swallowing, you can do in a coma)

basically, while studying is not the most fun thing in the world, and i'm only slightly procrastinating by writing this post, i'm amazed by how cool our bodies are.  basically, God made us in so many crazy, intricate ways.  people study their entire lives to figure out our bodies, and we just can't.  there will always be parts we don't know how they work, or why they work.  it's so cool that our bodies are set up exactly to do what we need to support life, and most of it, we don't even have to think about or try to control- it all just works how it needs to.


if only that was enough to pass my test... back to studying cranial nerves, areas of the brain, and nuclei i can't even pronounce :)