Stress and Fun

My stress level has been very high the past week, and it's finally starting to come down. I got my anatomy and chemistry mid-term grades, and they weren't as high as I had hoped. I did just about average in chemistry. I got the vast majority of the test completely right, but got 0 points on two questions, so that brought my grade down a lot. Regardless of the grade, I feel that I showed that I really did know what was going on and understand the material- so that makes me proud of myself. In anatomy apparently I didn't know the material as well as I thought I did, but there's still time to make that up. In two weeks is our last practical over all the muscles, and then the next week is finals week. This weekend I finished up a big lab report that I've been putting off, and I feel pretty good about it. I also got half of my nutrition paper done that's due on Wednesday. So over all, I got a lot done this weekend and that makes me feel a little more relaxed.

To try to get through these last few weeks in one piece, I've decided to let up on the wedding planning. Making all those big decisions (well, they felt like big decisions to me) were adding to my stress, and let's face it- right now the wedding is just not as important as school. We have all summer to plan. So for now, I have told Daniel that I cannot spend any more time and energy on the wedding. He completely agrees. Daniel is very good at reducing my stress. He does anything he possibly can to make my life easier. For example, this weekend he did all of my usual house-cleaning chores. And he did all of it before I even got out of bed on Saturday morning! :-) That was a huge relief in itself. I felt like I could get up and focus on school instead of cleaning the house. He is the best. On Friday, I was sort of having a mini-meltdown. I really didn't want to go to work because I felt like I should be studying and doing homework. I couldn't concentrate on anything but how I should be studying. Daniel told me to take a deep breath, calm down, and focus on what I'm doing- everything else can wait. I did what he said and of course it all worked out. I ended up doing a Bio-Plex at work, which has intermittent 30 minute incubation periods where I have nothing to do. So I pulled out my anatomy textbook, and got some studying in then. That made me feel so much better. I also told the people I work with that these next few weeks will be very busy for me, so they agreed to give me easy stuff at work so I could concentrate on school.

I did get some leisure time this weekend. Usually fun stuff makes me even more stressed at times like this, but I think it helped this weekend. On Saturday Daniel and I went shopping. I haven't bought myself some new clothes in a very long time. Every time I've gone to the mall in the past year, I feel like everything is so expensive! So I gave myself permission to spend lots of money today- I've earned it. I have never gone to The Limited before, but I really like their clothes. And because I bought so much at once, I opened a credit card and got 25% off, plus I got a student discount of 15%. They have a permanent student discount of 15%! I also earned 2 $25 off of $50 next time I go. I think it's a good idea to wait a long time, and spend all at once. I ended up getting 5 tops for 40% off! That made me very happy.

Last night Daniel took me to a Greek Life barbecue. Delta Zeta was putting it on to kick off their philanthropy on Monday night. They paid DUGS (DU Grilling Society) to grill hamburgers, hot dogs, salmon burgers, and pineapple. They always make the most delicious food. Then we walked to the music school and saw Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Quite a few of our friends were involved- mostly behind the scenes. Hope was the dramaturgist, which means she does research about the play to help the actors understand the background of it. She also wrote the production notes in the program and led a talk back at the end. We got to ask questions and the actors, set designer, costume designer, lighting designer, etc. answered. I was so impressed! Shakespeare is so difficult to read out loud, let alone memorize and act out on stage. They did an incredible job. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to understand anything, but I followed it pretty well. After the play, we took the light rail downtown and met some of our friends at a bar called The Front Porch. Every day they have a new list of 3 first names, and anyone with that name gets free drinks. That night happened to be James night, so he got us all free drinks. Then we walked a few blocks to Sing Sing which is a very popular bar with DU students, and all of Denver really. There are two pianos on stage, and people pay to hear their favorite songs. The guys on stage make people come up and do crazy stuff. There were lots of birthdays and bachelorette parties, and bachelor parties. And we saw a lot of DU people there too. I think that's the first time that Daniel and I have gone out to a bar. We're definitely going again tough- it was lots of fun.