"If you are going to make a mistake, make a big one."

These classic words of advice were oft-spoken by one of my elementary school music teachers, Mrs. Bryant.  In no relation to music whatsoever, I followed her advice to the T Wednesday night.  Let me start at the beginning and give you a run down on every single embarrassing thing that happened on Wednesday. Be prepared...it's a lot.

Wednesday morning: For the last few weeks I've been going to a hip-hop exercise class at the CRWC (the big, fancy, awesome gym on campus). It's not very far from my house, and I usually ride my bike but this Wednesday I needed to go get groceries right after, so I had to drive over. Ok, I am from a small town. We don't have to pay to park. Ever. You just park where there's a spot and you only get a ticket if you parked where the curb is yellow or if you parked in the teacher's lot and you're not a teacher. And even then I highly doubt you'd actually get a ticket. Anywho, there is a parking lot right by the gym that you have to pay for and then there is metered street parking, if you prefer that. Normally I do prefer street parking. But I was kind of in a hurry so I decided to just try out the lot and suck it up and pay for it. Everything went well until I had to leave. There are multiple exits to this lot, but only one is the "public exit". Apparently all the others are VIP exits, or something like that.  The "public exit" has two lanes that lead to the outside world. One was obviously a cashier window and the other just had a small box by it. For whatever reason I thought it was just one of those self-checkout things, with a swipy thing for a credit card. So I pulled up to and then sat for minutes upon minutes (ok it was probably like 30 seconds) and stared at this box. I came to the unfortunate realization that it was not for credit cards. It was for some fancy-pants secret card. Which I did not have. The girl in the cashier booth opened up her sliding window and asked me if I had that fancy-pants secret card. I told her I did not. She said I'd have to back out and come around to the other side.  Nooooo problem. Except that there was a ridiculously long curb/median in between the lanes. Why? Why would they put that there? It made my embarrassing moment multiple times more embarrassing because I had to slowly back out of that long lane (and yes, I did run into the curb. Twice) and then drive up to her window. To top it off, as I paid her my $2, in quarters, I dropped one of them on the ground. This brought on a rather sympathetic look from her as she said "It's ok. I will get it later. You can just go."  Thank you, cashier lady. I really did not want to get out of my car and pick up that quarter. That was enough embarrassment for those 10 minutes, thank you very much. 

A little bit later Wednesday morning: Hy-Vee on a weekday morning doesn't have too much potential for embarrassing one's self. Yet somehow I managed.  In the cheese aisle, I maneuvered my way past a Hy-vee worker who was smiling, pushing boxes and chatting with some other workers further down the aisle. As I start scanning the wall of cheese to figure out what I need, the aforementioned worker turned to look back into the aisle and said "Need some help?" I thought she was talking to me so I instantly responded "No thanks, I'm good." It took me a good 3 seconds before I realized she had been asking the other workers, the ones she had just been chatting with, and not me. I'm pretty sure she chuckled a bit before walking away, and it wast rude or anything, but nonetheless I think I turned a not-so-lovely shade of pink. I wouldn't be surprised if all the friendly smiles in that aisle at that moment were a result of my eager response to a question not even directed to me. 

I realize these things (and the ones I decided not to tell you about) are all fairly small, insubstantial moments of embarrassment. But never fear, I told you earlier that I eventually did make a big mistake and I stick to my word. So here comes the big shebang.

Since I had just gone to the grocery store, which meant I finally had more food than cereal and goldfish,  and I didn't have night class until 7 pm, I figured it was the perfect time to make a legit meal. I wanted to stick to my usual pasta and chicken, but decided to be a little adventurous and try and make a marinade for the chicken so it wouldn't dry out if I left it in the fridge for a few days. I found a simple recipe made of red wine, olive oil, scallions, garlic and salt. And since I had 3 out of these 5 ingredients, it was a perfect match. I poured the red wine and olive oil in the saucepan to get it boiling and, as the recipe told me, boil it for 10 minutes. At the same time I was cooking pasta, cutting chicken and slicing a tomato (with different knives! Don't worry.)  The marinade did eventually start to boil so I stirred it a bit and then let it boil, thinking the alcohol would mostly evaporate and it'd turn out perfect. Except then it exploded. And not a little explosion. A huge, splattered-red-wine-all-over-my-kitchen, kind of explosion. Thankfully I was not standing close to it, so I only got a few hot drops on my arm. But my cupboards, stove, floor and ceiling were not so fortunate. 

The weirdest part, besides me not understanding exactly how it exploded, was that it had been on the back burner, which is underneath the shelf that holds the microwave...so how on earth did that cursed oily liquid manage to curve around and splatter my high cupboards and ceiling?? I just don't understand.

I was able to make the floor less red-wine-y, so now it's just oily. And I wiped it off every horizontal surface and off most of the cupboards. Unfortunately the textured ceiling is still proving to be an obstacle. I just bought a magic eraser, so I'll be giving that a try during my one-woman cleaning party that is supposed to happen after I write this blog. Otherwise I may end up pulling a Michelangelo and repainting my entire kitchen celling. That sure sounds like a fun Christmas vacation project.

So there you have it, the story of how I succeeded at following Mrs. Bryant's advice. At least I didn't catch anything on fire. That was last weekend...when I almost burned down Emma's birthday cake. You're probably assuming I just almost left it in the oven too long. But you would be wrong. I actually almost burned it down when we were lighting it and she was about to make her birthday wish. The bigger the flame, the more likely the wish is to come true. Right? 

I will end on a good note because right now it sounds like all I do in my life is make mistakes. Last night I successfully made adorable mini stuffed peppers. No burning, no explosions and they tasted delicious. And all around success.  Oh and on Thursday I presented one of my research projects at our lab meeting and it went even better than I expected. So I guess that also kind of makes up for the whole kitchen-explosion thing :)

As always, thanks for sharing in the overall excitement that is my life! 

Happy weekend. Stay warm. 

So you can teach an old...Rachel new tricks

In all fairness, I realize I am not exactly old and it is maybe a little silly to implicitly refer to myself as a dog, but stick with me. The metaphor fits. I think.

Tonight I learned 3 new ballroom moves within 30 minutes. I had grown so accustomed to only dancing the moves I already knew because in the last 2 years because I have not had a ballroom lesson taught by anyone other than, well...me. I signed up for the Intermediate American Smooth lesson with the Hawkeye Ballroom Dance Co on Monday evenings, and this was actually the first Monday that I've been able to make it. When the lesson started and he announced we'd quickly review the 2 new moves from last week and then learn a new one, I got that little panicky feeling of "Everyone knows these moves and, of course, I've never even heard of them!" My palms probably got a little sweaty but I geared up to  learn them as best I could. And what do you know, it appears Rachel has her groove back because I picked them up immediately and furthermore, totally fell in love with them. The 3 new moves were in Waltz and I had just forgotten how much I love gliding across the floor, feeling (even if it's mostly a self-bias) rather graceful. It truly is rewarding to gain fluency in a particular move or step and then it's even more rewarding to be able to silently cooperate with another person to make that move even more beautiful.  And that is what a lot of tonight felt like. And then there was that old guy who was honestly just adorable and was so happy to be dancing that I didn't even care our feet weren't lined up and our rhythm was a little off.  More power to him :)

I feel a bit lame for the shortness of this post but I am trying to take care of myself so these allergies don't have as much of a chance against my immune system, so I suppose I better get to bed.  More to come soon.  My life is bound to be interesting enough in the next few days that I'm sure I'll be inclined to fill you in. Tusind tak for reading!

Goodnight, moon.

The lack of understanding of armamentarium put me in a state of exigency

I haven't had new words in awhile, so here are the two most recent (from 5 minutes ago when I was studying for neuropsych and found them written on a random page which had been forgotten until now):

Armamentarium: "the set of resources available for a certain purpose." In my case, this was referring to the set of neuropsychological assessments tools used to assess those who had experienced injury, insult or was seeking evaluation for some other mental condition

Exigency: a state of affairs that requires urgent thought or response

This is the life: learning something new everyday. 

Some Cyclones, some Hawkeyes, some amusing sights and a Billy Possum

Last night, I snuggled into my bed, watched an episode of the office and then pulled up my blog to write a new post. Before even typing the first word I realized all I had to say was what an awesome day yesterday was, and I figured that wasn't interesting enough for anyone to read about so I shut my computer and fell asleep. This morning, a whole 8 hours later, however, is a significantly different story. That might be because I should really be doing homework. So naturally my inclination to ramble about my thoughts has exponentially increased.

First and foremost, the CyHawk (Cyclone-Hawkeye: Iowa State: Iowa) game was last weekend.  I was rather torn, given my lifelong devotion to the Cyclones and my newfound title as grad student at U of Iowa. So here's how I attempted to remain fairly bipartisan...

And in case you can't read that in the mirror...

"Beat the other team" -courtesy Raygun

I'll admit I felt a little stupid taking self-photos but I wanted one for the blog and I was all by myself at home and there was just no other alternative. So it was all for you, blog-reader. All for you. 

 Prior to me taking those all too awesome and not at all lame selfies, this next photo is what I awoke to at 7:30 am last Saturday, and the exact same thing, only with more talking, yesterday.

Inflatable Herky. Guess you can't go wrong there.

Last Saturday my day consisting of tailgating, a.k.a. walking around my apartment, Melrose Drive, and the stadium trying to find a place to sit and eat food. I hung out with Cassie, one of Abby's friends/bridesmaids who lives in Iowa City. We finally made our way to the home of a friend of hers and then we just ate great food, sat on the garage roof (see next pic) and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Yesterday I did end up going to the game with two of my cousin's friends (who are, I hope, now my friends too!) and beforehand we all just hung out in my apartment with Abby and Kyle, who also came to IC for the game.  It seriously was such a blast.  I can't quite imagine doing this every weekend....okay, what I did I can imagine doing because I drank one beer, ate a bunch of food and went to bed at 11:30 pm.  However, I cannot imagine doing what most people do on game days. Haha.

Okay, now for the real reason I wanted to post this morning. Here are "Things I saw and laughed at while on my morning run the day after a home game" (drum roll please)

1. My landlord. At 7:15 am. Starting to pick up the trash and DJ equipment, which had been left out all night. Seriously, if I was a bad person (and I had friends to help me carry things upstairs) I would have a new computer, sound mixer and large tv right now. I waved at him.

2. A guy picking up his lawn beer pong table...and peeing into his bushes. Thank you for that.

3. A girl, decked out in Iowa gear, leaving a boy's apartment. Aw yeah, get it girl.

4. A husband and wife eating breakfast on their back porch. Adorable. Seriously, that one I'm not making fun of, I really think that's adorable.

5. A guy walking through our parking lot, picking up multiple trash bags full of cans. He's gonna make a nice lump sum of change on that. I approve.

Okay, I will end with one of the greatest sentences I heard on my podcast while I ran. I also laughed out loud at this. "The Billy Possum never even made it to see Christmastime, which is a special kind of tragedy for a toy."

So my newest obsession is listening to podcasts while I run and bike. My current favorite is called 99% Invisible. If I've spiked your interest enough, check it out at http://99percentinvisible.org/.  The episode I just referred to is #40: Billy Possum. 

I really have to go to work now, a.k.a. make breakfast, drink coffee, shower and then do work. Happy Sunday!!

Windshield washing

Straight from my random thoughts journal:

"I hope road trips don't go out of style, because of gas prices and all.  I want to eventually be able to take my family on road trips. Also, always wash the windshield when you stop to get gas."

That's actually my favorite part. Washing the windshield. When I was little and we'd be driving to Grandma's or a vacation, or really anywhere further away than central Iowa, I remember dad washing the windshield when we'd stop to get gas. And in my little kid eyes, it looked like magic. He was so precise and it was always spotless when he finished. I really have no idea where my obsession with this action came from, but I vividly remember being entranced as he scrubbed the windshield and then dried it, row by row, one half of the windshield and then the other, pausing to shake the water off the squeegee thing after every row. I just loved how spotless it made my view. Everything looked so much brighter and more pleasant after my dad was done with it. Right about now I could definitely go into a really lovely metaphor about how washing our metaphorical windshield can make life look brighter. But I won't. Because that was never my intention. I literally just wanted to remind myself to wash the actual windshield and to enjoy the car rides.

Apparently it's the most exciting weekend in Iowa City...

And I'm drinking orange juice, sitting on my exercise ball, writing in my blog. And I am totally content.

Sorry it's been so very long since I've updated. Multiple times this week I've inner monologue-ed blog posts in my head...while riding my bike, while I should be reading articles for classes, even while showering. But for whatever reason, none of those incredibly exciting posts have actually come to transcribed fruition. So it's about time.

Remember that post that was "a whirlwind of honesty"? This will be a little like that.  Now you can't say you haven't had a fair warning.

The last two weeks have been odd. Two weekends ago, on Saturday, I had the good fortune of having my boyfriend and his family visit Iowa City. And then on Sunday I had the really terrible fortune of realizing I needed to break up with him. As a general rule in my life, I avoid break ups as much as possible. This, in the past, has translated into me being in weird "fake" relationships, because it seems like the break ups just aren't as painful. Well this was a real relationship, and hence, the break up was indeed painful.  It was a terribly hard decision to make because a lot of things about the relationship were irrefutably good. This charming, caring boy had been there for me during one of the hardest times in my life. He made me laugh, he choreographed a really sweet dance that I got to be in, he kept me company during some of my longest nights of studying as I tried to graduate. All in all I am incredibly grateful to him for being there.

But even good things must come to an end. And I knew that was the case when I started to not feel like myself. I felt like I was compromising what I always dreamt of having because there wasn't as much communication, mutual respect, or understanding as I wanted. And perhaps at a time when I wasn't still reeling from losing my father, I could've handled all of that. But the "what if"s aren't important. Because I am still reeling. I am discombobulated and jambled and confused and heart broken from having to learn to live without the person I got one of my X chromosomes, and so much more, from.

And so I broke up with him. And thus began the downward tail spin. I don't exactly know what happened but within the span of 36 hours after said break up, I felt like I hit rock bottom. Now, I might be exaggerating. There are plenty of other things that could go wrong in my life, and I am grateful many of them haven't, but I at least hit faux-rock bottom. I was distracted, unpleasant to be around, surprisingly nauseous, constantly suppressing tears and being annoyed with that funny feeling you get in your throat when you try to stop the tears. The future looked bleak. I felt so lonely without constantly texting him random comments and being a part of conversations that spanned whole days and yet barely said anything. It was all just so strange.

Because I felt like dealing with this breakup should have been so minuscule compared to the huge loss I experienced a few months ago, I think the utter surprise of feeling so hurt and lonely just compounded my emotional experience, which was already shaky, given my current grieving situation. And suddenly it all turned into mourning my father in a way that I had not done yet. Because before I always at least felt like I had that one person to go to. Now I know, beyond a doubt, that at any time of the day or night, I have tons of people I could call or message and they would talk, listen, sympathize and tell me comforting things. But because we, monogamous humans, are made the way we are, having that one person who has a special, romantic interest in you, is just different from all the other relationships. And I see now that I put way too much reliance on having that relationship make me feel better. This is not to say that I did not mourn this past spring, while I was at Knox. I did. But this break up just made the feelings rush out again and surround me in a way that I had not quite experienced before.
I hate the phrase "hot mess". But, man, I was a hot mess. I guess when a relationship is really worth it, the end hurts.

So here's the inevitable silver lining. I eventually picked myself up from that faux-rock bottom, dusted the faux-rock dust of my pants and gave myself a good talking to.  Am I totally over it now? No.  Do I want to be? No. I am lucky I had a relationship that was worth enough to be upset over its ending. However, it is time to move on in the sense of "being me." Allow me one cliche for the evening. I need to find myself. I don't know where I lost me, but in the hustle and bustle of readjusting my life, in so many domains, I did manage to somehow lose track of who I am and who I want to be. And now begins the challenging task of refiguring all of that out.  I want to be a hard-worker, passionate, caring, generous, thoughtful, energetic and loving. I want to re-start waking up before the sun (multiple times this week!); I want to regain the strength I had during my first years in college; I want to stay focused and driven while working in lab and I desperately want to stay on top of my insane amounts of reading.  Success in all these areas is perhaps not entirely realistic, but at the very least, it is still helpful for me to recognize them as goals of my current life.

Woah, I did not mean to spend this entire blog post being all sappy and relationship-centered, but my eyes are dozing off and I'm going to start typing really weird stuff if I do not wrap this up quickly.  I promise to have another post soonish that will be way less emotional and way more "words, and other interesting tidbits, from the daily life of Rachel Clark." If you did make it this far, thanks for sticking with me :)

Oh and happy Cy-Hawk rivalry game tomorrow!! Maybe I'll post a picture in the next entry of the outfit that I have I picked out especially for tomorrow's event. My main strategy is to accessorize with yellow/gold.  Can't go wrong there!

Cardigans and jargon

1. I bought new cardigans. Two of them! (Re: the middle of Aug. 15's post)

2. New words of the week

dysarthria: impairment in the motor-speech system that results in difficulty articulating

malinger: feigning illness (in the context of using neuropychological assessments to determine if one is truly impaired or is "faking it")

gliosis: growth or production of astrocyctes in areas where damage has occurred in the nervous system

masticatory: relating to the act of chewing (often times a description of abnormal behavior rats engage in after brain damage or surgical tissue resection) 

interictal: the time period or interval between seizures or convulsions

congener: organisms within the same genus

3. I don't have a third thing.

Oh I guess this can be my third thing: I survived my first week of graduate school (and enjoyed almost all of it), think my classmates are super rad and have gained one pant size because my legs are so much bigger from all this bike riding. Weird.

Happy Saturday!