Sadness or Euphoria

They say that these are not the best of times,

but they're the only times I've ever known,

and I believe there is a time for meditation, 

In cathedrals of our own

                                                                                 "Summer, Highland Falls"
                                                                                              -Billy Joel


Well, it's official.  After 22 straight years of spending spring break in southern Florida, almost half of my life, we are not going.  That bastard known as King Corona ended that tradition.  What he fails to understand is that this trip initially was about uninterrupted adult time with my mom.  It was a break in my day to day adulting of kids, work and home to reconnect with the woman who raised me.  In our time together down there, she helped me to understand that a lot of life's knots could be untied with a healthy dose of sun, sand, salty air and the gentle rhythm of the waves on the warm gulf coast.  That is why even after she moved back to Chicago, and later after she passed, I looked forward to this time away from my otherwise busy life. Even last week the denial was deep.  We couldn't fly, but we could drive....  Well, no, a mandatory 14 day quarantine was imposed, punishable by law.  Then there was the notion of we could go someplace else, maybe a luxury cabin in the Smokey Mountains with an indoor pool.....  No.  Now there were travel advisories, and the final deal breaker, we are in medicine and now have to work.  The irony of a virus squashing a vacation for this healthcare provider is not lost.  So, whether I agree with the lyrics or not, I'm forced to meditate in my own proverbial cathedral.

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity,

A reason coexists with our insanity,

Though we choose between reality and madness,

It's either sadness or euphoria

Truth be told, due to a heavy first half of the month and lower numbers the second half, I have found myself home for the last few days.  Just like everyone else, watching the gut wrenching footage out of the emergency rooms just three hours south of me, coupled with phone calls of my own exposure and the actual contraction of the disease by a nurse friend of mine suddenly tied my proverbial knots of life just a little bit tighter. It seemed as though the insanity of all of this was not going away anytime soon, so I did what I do best.  I got busy.  In the last few days I have organized my office and dove headlong into the basement.  The basement.  This was kinda one of those things that was not urgent in the busyness of day to day life.  It wasn't going anywhere, it didn't really interfere with day to day life at Chez Summers, yet it was down there.  A full footprint of my 3500 square foot house, half of which is full of moving boxes and random Christmas clutter and God knows what else.  I should probably also admit we had a small flood a while back when the power went out, and the sump pump could not operate...  OK.  It was a mess.  

As I dug head long into the basement this weekend, I was reminded of something else.  When we moved here six years ago, our packers were a day late coming.  They had half the time to do the work as the truck was on the way.  This caused random shit to be thrown in boxes with no sort of organization or order as it was 2:00 am by the time they were done and really did not care at that point.  I had blankets from a closet with dishes from the kitchen in one box, master bedroom and front hall closet in another.  Quality packers we had for sure.

When we moved in, essentially when the day to day stuff was unpacked, the rest ended up down in the basement for another day.   Over the years I have looked at the mountain of said boxes and honestly wondered what on earth was in them.   We were operational day to day, so clearly it was not household stuff.  There were a few obvious things in them, like china, but what the hell was in the rest?  So, I started emptying boxes.  I found hidden treasures I had forgotten about mixed in with the random shit, like my high school year books, and sorority pics of me with gigantic hair that the kids thought was hilarious, packed with the linen closet.  Of course.  I found my high school softball letter jacket, and yes it fits.  It's actually too big in with the children's books.  There was the gold cross my mom had bought for my oldest when she got baptized, which shockingly was in a bin with her name on it.  Oh wait.  I packed that.  I found things I thought were lost forever, and things I forgot I had, and whole ton of crap I didn't need.  There were happy memories intermixed with twinges of grief as the purging progressed on.

For we are always what our situations hand us,

It's either sadness or euphoria

I am pleased to report about one third of the shit has been purged, and two van loads of garbage have been taken to the dumpster.  Yes, there is still a ways to go, but I am getting there a little at a time.  I suppose if King Corona had not cancelled my vacation I never would have found the important things today or gotten rid of the junk I never really needed to start with.  It makes  me think that sometimes having life as we know it come to a screeching halt can seem awful at first, but it also can be an opportunity to help us to take the time to stop, look in our own proverbial boxes stashed out of site.  The deep things we push away when life simply gets too busy.  These are the boxes that have been jammed with so much random shit, that we have lost site of our own treasures.  Interestingly, I am finding this process to be just as helpful as a quiet seat at the edge of the sea.  Yes, the job is a little messier, physically a little harder, and no my mom is not here. However, I did find a treasure that belonged to her, one that now holds a place of honor in my home. It is a Lladro nurse I bought for her many years ago as a teenager.  She was a highly educated, high ranking nurse who wrote national infection control standards for the country.  How appropriate I would find it today to watch over me as I head back to the front lines of Corona.  A little reminder that regardless of the invisible tyrant King Corona, we have the choice between embracing the sadness or choosing the euphoria associated with believing the best is still yet to come.

The Jungle of Corona

Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun and games,

We got everything you want honey, we know the names,

We are the people that can find whatever you may need,

If you got the money, honey we got your disease

Guns N' Roses                                    

I suppose you could say there had been a little shift in my pre work playlist.  It used to be I would gear up with something upbeat like Katrina and the Waves,"Walking on Sunshine."  Why?  I have been a nurse practitioner for 19 years and I love what I do.  I love solving medical puzzles, but more importantly I like to walk aside patients in their illness.  I like to help them to understand the steps we are going to take together to get them well, whether it is medication, a cast, or sutures...  There is a certain satisfaction in having a hand in making something better for someone else.  Well, there was anyway, but that is all different these days, as we are living in the age of corona. 

Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day,

You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play

Ah yes, corona, more specifically COVID-19, the emerging invisible monster that has effectively put life on indefinite hold on so many fronts.  There are scary graphics over news stories, and frightening footage from Italy.  There are drastic measures to "flatten the curve."  Just like everyone else, I am frustrated by all of the closings.  Frustrated my kids are home for some weeks.  Worried about the lost time in the classroom for my Haitian child already behind.  Worried about a major event I am hosting not becoming a reality and hurting the charity I run. Hell, even my beloved gym is closed.   My worries went on and on and were only compounded with having to go to work  as usual, with the opportunity of said invisible monster to enter my doors at any moment, which made work a bit more like a wild jungle, rather than a cheery clinic.  

You know where you are?

You're in the jungle baby

You're gonna die

I get asked if I am afraid all the time.  I will admit.  My first shifts after the news hit I was apprehensive as  I didn't really know what I was walking into.  I am in leadership in my company, so I put on the brave face, geared up with a little Guns N' Roses, gave my staff a pep talk and got to work.  What I found was not really a jungle.  It was more me in a mask,  sitting down with patients that were absolutely panic stricken and once again doing what I love to do.  Walking the corona path with them helping them to understand the illness and making plans for moving forward be it testing, quarantine or reassurance.  As far as me catching the corona virus?  It may happen.  However, I took my health back five years ago.  If it does, I know I will recover and take on yet another badass 8 foot wall on the side of a mountain later this year at a Spartan Race.  Only now, I have the opportunity to truly test my own resolve, as with the gym closed, all training in this period is now self motivated. 

I suppose now that I really think about it, life is full of invisible monsters.  There is the haunting of past failures, there is the envy of those smashing the very goals we only dream about but never think we can really accomplish.  There is the healthy fear of change, as our comfort zones have become our very own paralysis, even when they no longer serve us.  It is these monsters that keep all of us trapped in our own jungles with no clear direction to get out.  Maybe the better thing to do is to put on the mask, trust our own resolve, grab the proverbial machete and start whacking away at the things standing in the way of our vision.  Only then will we see the path to our goals.

Truth be told?  I think we will come out the other side of Corona, maybe a little wiser, and hopefully a little kinder.  The better question is, until then, will we lose sight of the notion that better things are ahead?  I'll be honest, I lost it in the panic of it all for a bit.  However, today after my shift it was time to change up the play list.  As it turns out, stepping out of the jungle of frustration to walk on sunshine did help spark the air of optimism I have been missing as of late, and I was easily reminded that the best is yet to come.  

Terminator Pull Ups, a Lesson Learned at the Bar

My 14 year old likes to go out for long walks or bicycle rides.  He has explained that he uses the fresh air and quiet to regroup, all in all a pretty healthy coping mechanism for a kid in the throws of high school.  Much to my surprise this year, all he asked for for Christmas was a pull-up bar.  Such a curiosity to me in the age of air pods and souped up electronics.  He is not really a formal exerciser, but he explained his love of being in motion has made his lower body strong, and left his upper body weak.  So, his solution was a simple pull-up bar.  I figured that seemed logical, so Christmas morning he found himself in our home gym with his first steel free standing pull-up bar pounding out ten at a time Sarah Conner "Terminator 2" style.  Ahhh.... youth.

What I did not anticipate with his gift was the personal reaction I would have to said piece of steel.  I suppose it is the PTSD of being the fat kid trying to earn the Presidential Fitness Patch in the 70's.  At that time, pull-ups were part of the deal for boys, as was the coveted,"flex arm hang" for girls.  Honestly?  It didn't really matter what it called for on this torture device, I certainly was not going to achieve it.  I grew to loathe the pull-up bar and the humiliation associated with it.  Yet, here I am at age 50 with that very thing taking up residence in my basement. 

When I think about my past year of Spartan racing, yes, I have a pile of shiny medals, and fancy finisher's shirts, but the truth is, my racing was different this year.  Adding 15 pounds of muscle, as I focused on strength training, suddenly made the already difficult hanging obstacles simply "Amy's burpee stations."  I did not effectively cross even one this race year, which was certainly a change from last year.  My mounting frustration over being able to lift super heavy and yet not cross the rings like I had in past years became quite the mind game.  So, I did what I always do when I cannot take the turmoil, I ratted myself out to my accountability partner and commit to doing pull-ups every day to try to prepare for Spartan Race Season 2020, because 2019 held way more burpees than I cared to repeat. 

The first time I approached the bar, I knew it wasn't going to work.  I could do little more than hang.  My childhood humiliation and frustration came flooding back to me, and I found a hatred for this piece of steel that came from deep within.  I found myself on Amazon ordering the freaking bungee assist, because that's what independent badasses need, a stupid bungee cord.  Why couldn't I do this?  Why did I promise my partner I would?  Screw it.  Will take the burpees.  I hate burpees too, but let's face it, I could do those.  The only flaw in that logic is it is much easier to let myself down than it is someone I made a promise to, so here I was locked in.

So, off I went in week one, five full assisted pull ups, only I could not do them five in a row..... I could do three then two.  This was going to take a while, and to be honest, I found myself giving this steel contraption of horror the bird every time I had to walk by the stupid thing, as if the steel could somehow absorb my anger with it all.  Yet I did it anyway.  I should probably clarify, this is a lot of bird giving.  The bar is on my way to the laundry room.  With six humans under my roof laundry is my second full time job. 

I would go on to do what anyone suffering through difficult training would do, I whined to my trainer.  This was hard.  I was not getting anywhere.  Apparently, I thought he had a magical wand to wave to make it somehow easier.  He didn't have that, but he did have a simple piece of advice.  Try a chin up.  Wait... aren't those the same thing?  No.  Reverse the grip to underhand and use the biceps I have worked so hard to gain.  Much to my surprise I could do those.  I still needed an assist, but I could do them, even five in a row.  Somehow finding this little change gave me enough success to keep working toward the bigger goal of full on  Terminator  badass pull-ups, just like my kid.

My experience working the bar has made me think about the frustrations of life.  How many times do we direct long standing frustrations over seemingly insurmountable past circumstances to the proverbial pile of steel we are currently trying to overcome?   Maybe the better answer is to seek out those who see our potential better than we do, let them help guide us to change our technique to use what we have already gained, and not be afraid to push past the pride of being an independent badass and use the assist to grow into what we really hope to achieve.

So, here we are in March.  I suppose I should give a status update on Operation Terminator Pull Up 2020.  I still do them every single day.  I have decreased the amount of times the steel is shown the bird and increased the pull ups and chin ups to 8 apiece with the assist, except on laundry days.  Then it is the usual 16 plus two per load, making the walk by less about the bird and more about the work.  It's still frustrating, but the deep seeded trauma of the Presidential Fitness Test 1979 seems to be fading.  As for my son?  He's up to banging out 15-20 at a time and has biceps that rival my 23 year old's.  It just goes to show, if we celebrate the small victories sometimes we get the glimpse of the best things that are surely yet to come.