New Years Resolution

A few days late, but I wasn't inspired to make one until today.

"Stop wasting your time, your energy, your emotions, on people that don't deserve it or appreciate it. Instead of spreading yourself thin, focus more on culturing the relationships that bring you joy, and that you can add value to. Love yourself even more than you did last year. Believe in the best version of yourself. Listen more and talk less. Be the kind of person that you want others to see in you. And always, always see the good in everyone."

A Skeptical Gator

For the record, I am a die hard Gator fan, but I am NOT jumping on the Will Muschamp bandwagon just yet, unlike most of the Gator Nation, it seems. I get that everyone is pumped up and excited, but let me just point out a few things here.

People should know that Jeremy Foley, Bernie Machen and even Will Muschamp are very good at saying EXACTLY what the Gator Nation wants to hear. First of all, Will Muschamp talks, sounds and acts JUST LIKE Ron Zook. Not to mention he's coming in during a situation JUST LIKE the one Ron Zook faced...having to follow a head coach who was loved by and did great things for the Gator Nation, yet has absolutely no head coaching experience to his name. I hate to sound stuck up, but Florida is too good of a school to have any business gambling on coaches that are completely untested on a head coaching level. Make no mistake, when Urban Meyer resigned, the UF head coaching job was the number one head coaching job IN THE COUNTRY! For Jeremy Foley to openly say that he didn't even contact any other candidates before offering the job to Muschamp is pretty arrogant. Seems like a knee-jerk, rebound reaction to me. When UF and Spurrier ended their relationship in 2002, Ron Zook was the rebound coach. And we all know about rebounds...they seem like a great decision at first, but over time we realize that their only purpose is to boost our egos a little, until we're ready to put ourselves out there again for the real thing.

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that Will Muschamp is a HUGE Georgia fan! He grew up in Georgia and played college football for THE BULLDOGS! Everyone's playing up that he's a native of Gainesville, including Muschamp himself, but let's not forget that he and his family spent just as much time in Georgia rooting for the Bulldogs as they did in Florida rooting for the Gators. He's also best friends with FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher, and that's not an overzealous statement. They spent time together on the coaching staff at LSU and he and Jimbo even own a beach house together. I'm not saying that these affiliations disqualify him from the job as head coach of the Gators, or that they even mean anything...but they could. I think I'd rather have a coach whose blood pressure actually rises a little, who gets a little steamed up when facing the Bulldogs or the 'Noles. Wouldn't your rather have someone on our sideline who ISN'T empathetic towards two of the biggest rivals in Gator football history? I know I would.

Now I realize none of this means ANYTHING and that it's ALL speculation at this point. My understanding is that Muschamp comes with an exceptional resume, from time spent at LSU and Texas as well as (limited) experience at the professional level. (But so did Ron Zook. Just sayin'.) So I could be completely wrong, and I really, really hope I am. I don't pretend to know diddely squat about football and pro-style offenses and whether or not the SEC really is "the line of scrimmage league." But I don't think that disqualifies me from having an opinion as a layperson and a Gator fan. This is all just the rantings of a girl who grew up loving the Gators and everything they stand for, and watches with her heart in her throat every time they take the field. So excuse me if I haven't lifted my hands in a "Muschomp" just yet.

A Very Unordinary Miracle

I just got back from a spur-of-the-moment weekend vacation and have been trying to catch up on life, since it obviously did not stop to wait for me while I was gone. Which is why I have not written anything about the amazing thing that happened while I was on vacation until now. I just got back on Monday from a quick, three-day cruise to the Bahamas. I hadn't had a vacation in a while, and happened upon a very discounted price, so at the last minute I grabbed a couple friends and off we went. We had a wonderful time, reveling in the chance to sit back and enjoy some of the warm weather Florida has been missing, while enjoying the freedom of having every meal made for us, nearly every whim catered to. Which is exactly what we were doing on the last evening of our cruise...

We were sitting on the top open-air deck of the ship, next to the pool, playing a rousing game of dominoes and enjoying some beverages as we watched the Atlantic Ocean go by, when my friend spotted a small white object bouncing in between the whitecaps. At second glance, it almost looked like a tiny white flag. She immediately said, "That looks like a tiny little boat out there in the ocean!" Always the skeptic, I quickly dismissed that idea, sure that it was just some debris or a "lobster trap" or something...but she kept her eye on it, and as it slowly got closer to the ship, it did indeed look a little like a toy boat with a white sail. And as it got even closer, you could almost be certain that there was something on it that was moving. By this time, the object had attracted the attention of a few other passengers, one of whom informed a crew member. Before we knew it, the giant cruise ship was making a slow U-turn to investigate. As the object inched closer and closer, we discovered that it was indeed a boat, though not a toy one, but actually a raft with what appeared to be more than one person on it. Over the next several minutes, the most amazing thing happened. The cruise ship finally got close enough to discover six people on board a homeade raft. They were eventually rescued off of the raft by being hoisted with ropes up to the ship...and discovered to be six very dehydrated and weak individuals, five men and one woman, from Cuba that were attempting to sail to America. They had been at sea for 15 days, 8 of those days without food or water. We also learned that there had previously been seven people aboard the raft; one of them had died and been thrown overboard the day before. It was also said, though this is unverified, that they were no longer in the current that would have taken them to the coast of Florida, but were drifting and would most likely never have been found, had they not been spotted by people on board the cruise ship.

If you think that was an amazing coincidence, that the ship happened to be in the right place at the right time, it gets better. Early in the morning of that day, our cruise ship was scheduled to stop at a small private island for several hours before heading back to Florida. However, that stop was canceled at the last minute due to weather and choppy seas affecting the ability of the small tenders to safely dock on the island. Because of this, we started heading back to Florida earlier than anticipated. If we had docked on the Bahamian island as originally planned, we would most likely not have crossed paths with the raft at all, or if we had, it would have been dark and they would not have been seen.

All of this leads up to an amazing rescue that I personally believe was more than a mere coincidence. It was also thrilling to watch, and to hear the details from the crew later. It was a little sad too, knowing that these people were so desperate to leave whatever situation they were in that they risked their lives to try to make it to America...and yet, they didn't make it. As you may know, there's a law in Florida referred to as "wet feet, dry feet" that basically means that if these people had made it to dry land and had stood on American soil, they would have been able to stay in America. Because they were rescued at sea, they will now be taken back to Cuba instead. I'm sure it's better than dying at sea, but it's still a little disheartening. However, it was still an incredible thing to witness the rescue, and certainly surreal.

This story made local and national news, and I've posted a link to a video of the raft and passengers just prior to rescue that was shot by one of the cruise passengers. Being several stories up, I had not seen the rescue in such close detail until I saw this video; I was only able to get some blurry stills from my vantage point on the top deck of the ship. It definitely shows the joy on the faces of the passengers as we approached their vessel, dispelling the rumors that I had heard that they were reluctant to be rescued. One of the passengers was even blowing kisses toward the ship, while lying on his stomach, too weak to do anything but pick up his head.

http://www.wesh.com/video/26035168/detail.html

A Lion Called Christian

I'll keep this short, but I just had to share. I just stayed up way past my bedtime to watch the full, extended, true story of Christian the Lion. I laughed, I cried, sometimes both at the same time. What a beautiful story, much better than anything on TV these days and absolutely worth sacrificing bedtime for. Here's the YouTube link for Part 1 of the story, you can find all five parts under the same user/subscriber. Goodnight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cqouVL0AiQ

Why I hate and, once in a while, love my job.

Today something kind of awesome happened at work. I actually helped make a significant difference in my patient's quality of life. I have been working with this patient since I came to Jacksonville six weeks ago, and he was on therapy for at least a month prior to that. When I started working with him he was not able to get out of his bed and into his wheelchair without extensive help, due to physical disabilities and several other issues. Today I could tell him that he no longer needed physical therapy because he can now safely get in and out of bed and into his wheelchair with the use of a sliding board (a tool used in therapy, for patients who are not able to stand or or support their body weight on their legs). To some people, this may not seem like a big deal, because we take for granted that we are able to get out of bed on our own strength every day. For this man, this was a HUGE accomplishment. Imagine being a grown person, and yet having to rely on other people to physically lift you out of bed because you can't do it yourself. This man is now able to regain a little of his dignity because, after months of therapy, he is now able to get out of bed on his own, without physical help. When I told him he had officially graduated from therapy, he was a little quiet, didn't say much...but later, he came back with tears in his eyes and thanked me for pushing him so hard and making him "stick with it." He even said he was going to miss coming to therapy. This is so significant because he was a very difficult patient...when I started working with him, he had an irrational fear of falling, to the point that he was terrified to sit on the edge of the bed. There were many times were I was sure he hated me, because I really pushed him hard, never giving in to his fears, but making him face them every day, many times until he was close to tears. He has not completely conquered all his fears yet, but he is so much better, and he was able to get past them enough that he could learn how to transfer himself using the board. He told me that he never believed that he could do it until I believed in him, and that just made my day, my week, and probably my month.

You must be wondering why I hate my job, then. Here's why...this ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS! If I could treat patients like this every day, all day, I would LOVE my job. Wait, you say? I'm a physical therapist, this should be happening all the time, it's what I do for a living, right? This is exactly what I THOUGHT when I graduated, too. However, that is not the case, not even close. For every patient like this, I have ten patients that are the complete opposite. These are the patients that couldn't care less about therapy, that are completely content to remain at the level of care they are in and have no desire to get better. They complain all day, every day, find every excuse in the book to not do the things that I am trying to teach them to do. They don't want to put in an ounce of effort, and are only in therapy because that is the only way their insurance will allow them to remain in the nursing home without significant financial loss. (If the nursing home can show that a patient needs the skilled services of physical therapy, most insurances will pay for a patient to stay in the nursing home for a certain period of time, as opposed to the patient paying for it.) And since, of course the nursing home wants the money, I'm required to treat these patients whether or not they really need or want the therapy, and whether or not they can significantly benefit from it. So I basically have a lot of "filler" patients that are making the nursing home and rehab companies money, but that are entirely unmotivated, undeserving and unqualified for therapy. For every patient that thanks me, I have dozens more that glare at me, grumble constantly, and even several that flat out just curse at me. And since the rehab department is basically required to bring in a certain percentage of the income for the nursing home, if we don't have enough patients on our caseload to make the grade, we have to "find" more patients, which is usually done by "screening" the nursing home residents and finding the ones that have "declined," in order to bring the caseload up. It's such a joke, and it's hard to go to work every day when I rarely get the chance to actually put my skills to work and really make a difference in someone's life. Which is why I get so excited when I actually do...

"Proud, happy and thrilled!"

I am SO excited right now. Beyond excited. Thrilled. Ecstatic. Elated.

I just ran.

Yup. That's it. I ran. And I'm excited about it. Why? Because I am finally healthy enough to run again!!!! This feels so amazing!

It's the first time I've run in about five weeks...and I really sucked at it. But I don't care. I RAN!!! It feels so good to be able to run again, I just can't even explain how good it feels. Now I just have to get good at it again. Especially since I challenged my brothers to a 10K on Thanksgiving.

Also, I'm making some great new friends here in Jacksonville, and having a great time with my good friend Meredith, and there's even a small chance I may be able to stay here past Christmas...though this is still very up in the air right now and, like my very superstitious patient Mr. M would say, "You don't want to jinx it."

And...cupcakes for the first person who can tell me the movie that the quote in my blog title came from. This does not include my sister, who I have no doubt already knew the answer before I even posed this challenge. In fact, this is way too easy...anyone else who isn't already awesome enough to know every word of this movie by heart could just Google it. So the cupcakes are out. But let's see who gets the correct answer first. Go!

Life is what happens when you're trying to plan it.

I don't even know where to begin. As I'm writing this, I'm also thinking about the millions of things I should be doing instead. True to form, my life has not slowed down at all since arriving in Jacksonville. Sure, I finally found a place to live, settled into my job, and worked on getting healthy again...but that's just the beginning...

The first great thing that's happened to me so far is that I'm starting to feel better again! I'm always amazed at how much of a difference this makes in every aspect of my life, as silly as that sounds. Sometimes I just get used to feeling less than 100% and I forget what's it like to not always worry about my health and whether or not it's going to affect my job, my social life, my sleep, my weight, my appearance, my future...As a rule, I try not to let my health affect any decisions I make, but all the same, it doesn't stop me from worrying and thinking about it ALL THE TIME. I truly don't remember how incredible it is to feel healthy until I AM healthy and all that worry is gone...it's an amazing feeling! I feel like I can conquer the world! Which is apparently what I'm trying to do, or at least it feels that way...

I've been so busy the last couple weeks that I haven't even finished unpacking yet. I got most of the important stuff done, but there's still a few boxes to take care of...one of the things I should be doing right now. I'd like to have it all done tonight so that tomorrow when my friend Meredith comes over the place will look nice. I've been seeing a lot of Meredith lately, it's been great to spend time with her, I haven't seen this much of her since we went to college together several years ago. We're having fun making dinner for each other, going out for dinner...and brunch, we also went to a movie...and she helped me unpack my truck when I moved in! I've also met some new friends in Jacksonville, including a girl I work with named Jessica, who went to the Jaguars game with me...Ugh, what an awful game that was...but we had tons of fun anyway, and I hope this isn't the last Jaguars game I get to attend this season...

Since I'm also getting involved with the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation here in Jacksonville, there's a good chance this will not be the last I see of the Jaguars. Many of you know that I'm a huge Jags fan, and also a David Garrard fan, and he, as well as the Jaguars organization, is involved with CCFA too. Maybe I'll even get to meet him again! We'll see...but in any case I have several things going on with CCFA right now, just trying to lend a hand wherever I can by helping to raise awareness as well as fundraising in the Jacksonville area, and that involves a lot of time, which of course is always in short supply. I'm happy to do it though, because CCFA has done so much for me. I met with Katie from CCFA yesterday after work, we had a lovely time at a fabulous place called Bistro Aix, just a few blocks from where I live...we talked up a storm, she has so many great ideas, and I can't wait to get started on them! I have a couple meetings to add to my already busy schedule, and Thursday I'm going to see a familiar face from camp at one of these meetings, can't wait!

Also excited for Florida/Georgia football weekend, coming up in a few days, not sure how I'm going to be celebrating yet, but you can be certain that I will not let it pass by unnoticed...

In between all that, I'll be working on settling into my new home and job, at least for now, can't believe that I might have to start all over again in a new town in 9 weeks...I'd like to stay here a little while longer, if possible. The job isn't bad, really, I don't actually have a lot to do, and I spend a lot of time doing nothing and taking little catnaps at my desk...but that could all change...I found out yesterday that my boss is leaving, this is his final week...Haven't met the new boss yet, so I don't know how much my job is going to change after this week. I'm just going to enjoy this week of freedom, in case it's my last. I'm also enjoying my new temporary home. I'm really glad I waited until I found something just right, even though it was stressful staying in hotel after hotel, and looking at place after place. By not settling, I got this great little townhouse right on the river, with a gorgeous balcony view, as you can see...and it's a two bedroom, so everyone can come visit! I love guests, and I promise to fit you into my schedule somewhere...

Oh yeah, now that I'm feeling better, it's high time I start training for my next half marathon! Ever since the first one, I knew it wouldn't be my last, that was such an awesome feeling...My plan is to do the same one in Gainesville, as long as I'm still in Florida in February. Now I just have to find a safe place to run here in Jacksonville...and a gym...and time...