Our silly, strange world.

My husband & I currently live in a very silly, strange world. A world where studying is never ending, money is strapped, and spending quality time with one another plus our fabulous community is...well, an unfortunate rarity. Although I continue to tell myself these crazy days as broke & busy love birds will one day come to an end; that this season too shall pass and bring about new adventures & opportunities with each other and those we love, I still have days where I find myself sad, lonely, overwhelmed & frustrated by the fact that my cute & studious husband is having an affair with Cecil - his 3,078 page medical textbook. 

Today was one of those days. I recently started my AmeriCorps position as the College & Career Coach at a nearby middle school. I was warned the first few weeks would be slow and that I probably would not find myself working 40 hours per week, which was fine considering I had racked up oodles of extra hours during the past two weeks of out.of.town training. Away from my hubby & home. Did I mention it was for two, very long weeks? Anyways, I digress. 


So today around noon, after I organized a cluttered conference/storage room, met with a few teachers & finished helping 7th & 8th graders complete a field study on the world's wettest football field - with a layer of dust covering my business casual attire and cold water saturating my disgustingly stinky ballet flats - I looked at my completed to-do list & contemplated taking the sunny, 85 degree afternoon off. In a normal world, I imagine this is what I would have done. Why not? My work hours are flexible, the beautiful fall sunshine was shining bright, and my sweet husband, who I spent the past two weeks apart from, was out of class & on his way home...


Back to reality. Our lovely yet sometimes wee-bit-overwhelming reality. Jordan and I feel blessed that as a second year medical student he has less lecture time and significantly more self-study time. This means he is in the classroom less and studying at home more. Hooray! It truly is a good thing. But good things can be  complicated, and remember, we live in a silly & strange world that does not revolve around the sun, but rather around the highly demanding and competitive testing calendar. For the most part, when Jordan is at home, he needs to be studying. Studying, studying, studying. Reading, highlighting, organizing, and cramming. Sun up to sun way down. Monday through Saturday. Time does not matter in this alternate universe. Drinking out of the fire hose we call medical school & working as hard as possible to pass tests is how we roll...


So today, instead of taking the afternoon off & adventuring in the sunshine with my hubs, I distracted myself with silly, unimportant tasks such as taping together old, dusty checker boards found in an ancient pile of clutter & rolling rubber bands around ridiculously corny & colorful "right decisions right now" posters. I chose to stay as late as I could at work so that I would not be tempted to enter into the study zone that we also call home, and distract my man. Rather, I needed to let my crazy boy focus in a quiet space & study his heart out before tomorrow brings yet another gigantic test. 

And the countdown to medical school graduation begins...